Late-night joy ride turns deadly

Early Tuesday morning, 17-year-old Lolita Prater helped her boyfriend push a Ford Explorer out of her sleeping parents' Woodmoor driveway.

It was the beginning of what was supposed to be a teenage summer joy ride. It ended tragically hours later when Prater, a bubbly and thoughtful girl who loved music and makeup, died after the sport utility vehicle she was driving rolled over on a Black Forest road.

The crash occurred just before 2:45 a.m. at Brentwood Drive and Pinery Drive, northeast of Colorado Springs, said trooper Gilbert Mares, a spokesman for the highway patrol.

Three other teenagers in the vehicle were uninjured but taken to Memorial Hospital as a precaution. They were Daniel Slate, 18, Jessica St. James, 14, and Alexus Jones, 14, all of Monument. Only Slate had on a seatbelt.

They were southbound on Brentwood Drive when Prater lost control, Mares said. Prater, partially ejected from the vehicle that came to rest on the driver's side, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Prater would have been a junior at Lewis Palmer High School this fall.

The teenagers Prater had just driven away from at the home of her friend Dani Barto, 15, on Brentwood Drive said the events leading up to the crash were nothing unusual for the tight-knit group that spends almost every summer night together.

"We could do nothing, and it was just fun," Barto said.

After sneaking out of her house sometime before 1:30 a.m., Prater and Slate, her on-again-off-again boyfriend since 8th grade, drove St. James and Jones to buy cigarettes at a gas station in Monument. The foursome then headed to Black Forest.

There, they met up with Barto, her brother Austin, 16, and Steven Williams, 18. The group hung outside the Bartos' home on Brentwood Drive, talking under the stars and listening to rapper Tech N9ne.

After saying "love you," to the Bartos and Williams, Prater sped off on the gravel county road in the sport utility vehicle, Dani Barto said.

"She was just trying to get the girls home," she said.

Seconds later, just before 2:45 a.m., the teens outside the Barto home saw the gleam of brake lights from around a bend on the gravel road and heard a crash.

"I saw Dan just getting up off his knees and one of the girls getting out," Williams said of the scene he and the Bartos ran toward.

With one hand holding his cell phone calling for help, Williams reached into the car and pulled one of the girls - he couldn't remember which - out of the vehicle.

The Colorado Springs police dispatch center received the first call for help at 2:46 a.m., and a unit from the Black Forest Volunteer Fire Department was at the scene 11 minutes later.

In that time, the teens realized Prater was unaccounted for. Williams looked under the smashed driver's side and saw her leg.

"I could not believe it was happening," Dani Barto said. "I was so scared, I didn't even know what to think."

The group made the splitsecond decision to try to roll the car back on its wheels and free their friend, who wasn't saying anything to them.

"We had it halfway up, but we couldn't get it all the way up so we set it down," Williams said. "Everybody just had super human strength."

After ruling out attaching ropes from Williams' truck to the SUV to pull it over, the teens and neighbors waited for emergency crews to arrive.

Williams knew Prater was dead when state patrolmen and sheriff's deputies put up caution tape rather than try to rescue her. Authorities would not confirm that until the sun came up.

When Christina Kausling-Barto, Dani and Austin Barto's mother, called Prater's parents to tell them of the wreck, Prater's father told her his daughter was asleep in the next room.

Dani Barto called Lolita Prater "very mature," and Williams recalled a recent evening when, during one of their many long talks, Prater asked her friends about their different perspectives on heaven.

Alcohol and drugs are not suspected, and no charges are being considered for the passengers, the highway patrol said in a news release. The crash is still under investigation.

Except under certain conditions, young drivers in Colorado are prohibited from driving with more than one passenger or between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. The rules apply to anyone under the age of 21 with less than a year behind the wheel. Those with less than six months on the road may not have any passengers at all.

It was not immediately clear for how long, or even if, Prater had been licensed to drive.

"I think she taught my kids to always wear a seatbelt," Kausling-Barto said. "It is a car, it is not fun and games. Hopefully other teenagers will get that."

CONTACT THE WRITERS: 636-0232 or carlyn.mitchell@gazette.com; 636-0366 or lance.benzel@gazette.com