12:05 am: Matthew Sizemore
Mooresville, Indiana: At 5 minutes past midnight, 16-year-old Matthew Sizemore became the first highway fatality of June 7, 2005. Matt was one of 14 teens to die in a crash that Tuesday. By all accounts a good kid, Matt had just finished his sophomore year at Mooresville High and was looking forward to summer. One of his passions was working on old cars with his dad, Joe. The pair rebuilt a Chevy S-10 pickup that Joe gave Matt for his 11th birthday. "I was hoping if I gave him a place to put his time and money it would steer him clear of drugs and everything, and it did that," Joe Sizemore says. He started teaching Matt to drive at 13 in hopes of playing down some of the excitement tied to getting a license. "I thought if I did, it wouldn't be so new to him. He wouldn't be so quick to get out there and torque tires, go fast, and play hard in the cars." Hours before his crash, Matt drove off to see a friend in his stepmother's Hyundai Elantra because his truck needed repairs. "He should have been home somewhere around midnight," Sizemore says. "At 10 after 12 he wasn't in," but "I wasn't really sweating it too much. At 2:16 I got back up and he still wasn't in. I thought, man, something's not right. I got dressed and went down to a couple of his buddies' houses, and he wasn't there. So I came back home. I went ahead and got ready for work." Sizemore left for work a little after 5 am and had driven about 2 miles from his house when he spotted fire engines. "I saw the car upside down," he says. "I asked the fireman, "He's dead, isn't he?" The fireman asked me who I was, and I said I was his father. So they pulled me to the side. They told me I didn't want to go over there."
Police said Matt wasn't belted and had been speeding and lost control of the car. He ran off the road and hit at least 4 trees before the Elantra came to rest on its roof. He'd had his license for less than a year. "They said he was doing well over 90 miles an hour coming down through there," Sizemore says. Matt was one of 19 drivers involved in fatal crashes that day in which speed was a factor. "Every day you go through knowing he should be there," Sizemore says. "In life we're taught we could possibly bury a sibling. And you expect to bury a parent and a grandparent. You do everything in your power to teach your child right from wrong and teach them decision-making and the consequences of it. Your whole job as a parent is to protect your kid, and I failed. I don't feel like I failed him as far as a father. I feel like I may have failed him by making him a little too comfortable in a car. I mean, that was our thing. We were always around cars."
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Sizemore insisted: "I went over and looked at him upside down in the car." It took Sizemore a few moments to recognize him. "I told the cop, "That's my son. That's Matt.'"