Going Off a Cliff in Your Senior Year

There will be no graduation celebrations in the family houses of two high schoolers who cut classes in the morning of their school day to go four-wheeling in the hills near the Fayette-Manlius School District in Central New York State. What might have been similar to Ferris Bueller's day off turned into a horrific tragedy as Joshua Davis, 17, and Kevin Goich, 18, were killed when they went off a cliff in their parents' Toyota FJ Cruiser.

The joys of a spring day were too much for the boys, and it was customary for seniors to behave in strange ways when the weather warms. No one was alarmed until both failed to show up at home in the early evening of the same day. Parents called the authorities in the evening when the boys had not returned home. They also made calls to hospitals and police agencies.

The Sheriff's office had no word of the boys through the communications network of the police department. Notified of their cell phone provider, Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh contacted Verizon to see if they could get a location. The phone company picked up a signal about half a mile from one of their cell towers.

It was late at night when the boys were found. The four-wheel drive SU V was found on its roof at the bottom of a 30 foot cliff. One of the occupants of the vehicle was still conscious as the police moved in with searchlights, but rescuers figured that the boy could not have been saved even had they arrived earlier.

The site of the tragedy is well known to area residents. The boys were killed at a limestone quarry not more than a mile from the school. Although the site is marked by a plethora of orange and yellow signs warning people of the hazard, teens sometimes gathered on the plateau above the quarry for unsupervised social activity.