My friend Gwen got killed in a car wreck in 11th grade. We used to eat lunch together, and smoke the occasional joint. 
A girl in my eighth grade class’ father got laid off from his job. He couldn’t handle the pressure, so faked continuing to work. When that no longer seemed an option, he one day started taking the kids (there were four in all) out of school one by one and killing them after he’d already murdered the mother. This girl was the last to die and then he chose suicide by cop.
It was pretty bad all around, but there’s always an asshole. The way I found out was from this fat, little mean-spirited Eric Cartman type shithead who thought it was funny as hell. “You remember that little kid from the pool last night? he’s fucking DEAD! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
When I was in elementary school I was friends with this kid Ricky. He was sort of slow but really sweet. We played together at recess a lot. He had a large family with siblings who were much older than him.
Ricky’s sister was killed when she was on her way home from high school and her car got hit by a train, very close to the school (which is very close to my house). She was 18.
I remember being a little kid (10) and Ricky randomly mentioning his sister during recess. I never knew what to say.
There’s still a memorial at the train crossing and still a memorial at the school - 21 years later. I actually think about her every time I go across those tracks.
The city is now erecting a bridge over the crossing, and just last month they voted on naming the bridge in her memory. It’s really a tragic event that hit this community hard.
I knew Warren in elementary school. We had a small school, so I ran into him a lot. On the last day of school, I happened to be with him at the beach. I distinctly remember seeing him climbing up on the float when I was there.
On the way home, he tried to ride his bike across the railroad tracks to get home . . . .
In a rather high-profile local case (it was written up in a national periodical), a young relative was found dead in a car with two other kids, all with gunshot wounds. There was suspected gang involvement, and I don’t believe it was ever conclusively determined whether they were suicides, murders, or what. My relative was 18.
I heard about it on the radio on my way to work, but names weren’t mentioned. They hadn’t notified next of kin yet. I found out it was him later that day, when my mother called.
I was in 5th grade, in school when I heard the sirens. As usual, no one thought anything of it. Found out later that night that 4 8th graders had skipped school and went to one of their houses. They took out dad’s classic car and wrapped it around a tree. They were going fast enough that they hit the tree several feet in the air. 3 died, one had both his legs amputated.
When I was a Jr. in High School, Davey, one of the kids in our Scout Troop, died.
He was born mildly retarded and with a heart defect; it was a miracle he made it to 14.
When I was a Sr., Dennis (a kid I knew only by name) was accidentally shot and killed by one of his friends, playing with his Dad’s handgun.
My first exposure to violent death came when I was 10. A kid I knew and occasionally played baseball with was beaten up and stuffed inside an abandoned refrigerator by a gang of losers. This was back in the days when abandoned refrigerators were a hazard because they would latch shut instead of having the magnetic seals.
One of my high school friends had an older brother who was always kind of a loner. He had a rough time in school, other kids picked on him a lot. My friend told me he always talked about how much better it would be once he graduated and got out of this town. Shortly before graduation, he found out that he was missing a credit and would not be able to participate in the ceremonies with the rest of his class. The night of graduation he went to his room and put a shotgun in his mouth.
Back in the 70’s, one of the neighbor’s twin girls (Suzanne or Carolyn, don’t remember which one) was fooling around in a dumbwaiter at the Junior High that they attended. It had been discovered by some other kids that the control’s lockout mechanism was easily bypassed (ballpoint pen did the trick, if memory serves). Apparently, they’d ride the dumbwaiters on a dare. Anyway, she couldn’t get out of the dumbwaiter in time, and the doors closed right on her neck. Dumbwaiters aren’t meant to carry people like elevators, so there’s no safety mechanism to automatically make the doors open if they close on something.
According to the paper, the dumbwaiter started moving anyway. She was decapitated.
My God. Some of these deaths are like Stephen King’s notepad. shudder
One of my childhood playmate’s father was killed in WWII; the kid hanged himself in the garage; he was around seven or eight years old.
A very good friend of mine drowned when we were around fourteen.
A girl I was sweet on was killed in a car accident when I was fifteen.
In high school, my best friend had a fist fight with another guy over a girl; my friend won the fight and the other guy gassed himself to death the same day. The girl dumped my friend within the month.
There was a nice guy named Heywood in my junior high who was killed by his own uncle. A bunch of them were playing poker and the uncle pulled a gun and shot the boy dead. He must have thought he was cheating or something.
There was a kid I didn’t know, older than I was, who died of leukemia.
My story happened to a friend of a friend. When I was ten, and my friend was 14, her best friend, Marcy, was killed by Marcy’s boyfriend, who hid the body up in the hills and took several people to see it.
It was kind of a big story at the time, and even served as the basis for a movie.
A brother and sister, whose first names I don’t remember and family name I won’t reveal, both fell through the ice and drowned in the local creek one winter. The public version of it was that the little girl slid out and broke through while sled riding and her brother died trying to save her. More likely, they were both out there fooling around when the ice gave way.
Joel hit a tree with his minibike. Dead from skull fractures.
Another guy from my class died in a similar accident on a motorcycle a few years later.
Donnie fell asleep at the wheel and slammed his car into an overpass.
Todd shot himself in the head with a deer rifle.
Howard dropped dead in the boxing ring when a punch in the head caused a blood vessel to burst.
When I was in high school there was a very shy girl in my year. She was smart but rarely spoke up and always walked with her head down and her hair hanging to obscure her face.
When she got off the bus, instead of crossing in front of it she would wait until the bus was gone and cross the street. One day she stepped directly into the path of a car. I believe she survived the initial impact but died shortly afterwards. I remember feeling guilty that I hadn’t really known her despite having attended the same (small) high school for 2 years.
My younger sister was so in love with her high schoo boyfriend. He was killed by the police.
I think that’s when she started going crazy.
Beverly, 16 and a year older than me lived a few houses down and easily was the sweetest, most beautiful girl I’d ever known. She and some girlfriends had just got their license, were out one summer night, were hit by a drunk driver and just like that she was gone. He fled back to Mexico and don’t think was ever caught. She’d been an only child and every time I saw her parents afterwards they looked so crushed, so utterly broken. I can still see her so perfectly in my mind and often wonder what her life, so full of promise, would have been like.
Darren had quickly become one of my best friends when I moved to a new school at a border town in Texas. Football teammates, we were always cutting up and he was just a good kid, straight as an arrow, no drugs or alcohol. The police were called to the home of a known drug smuggling family. They claimed Darren had shown up at their place with a gorilla mask on, had grabbed one of their kids and threatened to kill him so they shot him dead. It obviously was a murder but without other witnesses nothing could be proven.
Roy had played guard opposite me and we all were at Padre Island celebrating senior days. Roy didn’t drink but another teammate, David did and one night as we were going to a party he pulled his minibike out in front of Roy’s car. We attended his funeral two days before graduation.
When I was a newly-licensed driver I witnessed a hit and run on a skateboarder. This was pre-cellphone late at night in a residential area. Another car stopped to aid the victim so I raced to the nearest fire station to put in the alarm. He was dead before the paramedics arrived. Turned out it was my younger brother’s best friend. He was 14.
This next one happened when I was 48, so it doesn’t quite fit the OP. …
My next door neighbor’s 20-year old son died suddenly. Felt flu-ish on Friday and went to bed at 7pm. By Saturday noon he was in ICU in a coma from viral meningitis and he died Sunday before dawn.
A good student & athlete, the boy was in peak health before Friday. I’d often commented to my wife what it’d be like to be that young & vigorous & full of life & potential again. Turned out not like anybody expected.
See Musings over teen deaths - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board for a lot more stories like this