Two cars collided last year on Cinco de Mayo.
Considering the date, you might assume that at least one of the drivers was drunk — and you’d be right. Laura Varker was 17 years old, and she’d been tubing down the Salt River all day with her eight best girlfriends. Their T-shirts all read “Cinco de Drinko.” Even an hour after the accident, Varker’s blood-alcohol level was 0.09, over the legal limit for adults. And, as an underage driver, she was in violation of the law by having any amount of alcohol in her system.
One of Varker’s girlfriends, 15-year-old Felicia Edwards, didn’t drink a drop. But it was Edwards who died when Varker’s Yukon Denali hit another car and flipped over and over like a tumbleweed before coming to a horrifying stop on the Bush Highway north of Mesa. Edwards was thrown from the SUV and pronounced dead at the scene.
