Service shares grief,
memory of 3 students

A memorial service is held on the USF campus for students who died in a crash.

USF students and friends gather at a memorial service Tuesday in Tampa. [Times photo: Amy Newman]

By TIM GRANT

© St. Petersburg Times, published December 1, 1999

TAMPA -- Eyes downcast and candles flickering in the wind, grieving classmates shared memories, laughter and tears Tuesday at a memorial service for three University of South Florida students killed in a car accident.

They heard Leanna Dawson's father tell the story about teaching her to drive and winding up in a soybean field. They heard about how Jackie Ayala would climb to a top bunk and prop herself against the wall like Spiderman.

And they wondered, in their grief, why three young lives were snuffed out this way.

"It really makes you think of how life is. How short it can be and how not to take anything for granted," said Alicia Calamia, 20.

Dawson, 19; Ayala, 18; and Morocco native Majid Tahri, 20, were killed Monday as they returned to their dorms from McDonald's. Their car was struck at Fletcher Avenue and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard by a Cadillac driven by Mitchell H. James, a man with a DUI conviction and a long history of driving offenses.

James, who witnesses said failed to stop for a red light, was hospitalized with a broken leg and facial injuries. He has been released from University Community Hospital, Tampa. Hillsborough deputies are awaiting results of a blood-alcohol test before determining what charges to seek against James.

A fourth passenger in Dawson's 1986 Pontiac Firebird, David Sanders, 18, survived the crash. With facial bruises, he attended Tuesday night's service but spoke only a few words.

"I only knew them for a day," Sanders said. "I was in the car when it happened. I thought they were great people."

While Tuesday's service outside Gamma Hall was mainly for Dawson and Ayala, who had lived there, a separate service will be held for Tahri on Thursday at 4 p.m. by the 153 foreign students he befriended in the USF's English Language Institute.

A service for all three will be Friday at noon in the Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza.

Tahri had enrolled at USF to study finance in August and recently passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language, said Jeffra Flaitz, director of the institute.

"He was well-known in the institute," Flaitz said. "He was just a kid with a lot of energy. He was funny."

According to Tami Sbar, a sister of Tahri's aunt, Tahri hardly knew the kids he was with. He had gone outside his dorm to smoke a cigarette and began talking to Sanders.

Sanders was waiting for Dawson and Ayala to pick him up for a fast food run. When the girls arrived, they invited Tahri to come along.

Members of Tahri's family have pledged at least $5,000 to start a scholarship in his name for Moroccan students at USF.

"We don't want the opportunity that was taken from him to be wasted," Sbar said. "We want there to have been a purpose to Majid's life, his sense of adventure and his goals for the future."

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