Minutes before fatal crash, coach told players leaving pool party to be careful

Peach County High School football players were playing in a pool, enjoying each other’s company Saturday at the annual senior get-together.

“Lord knows we just had a great time… not knowing what the next hours would hold,” Coach Chad Campbell said Monday evening at a community gathering for 18-year-old Raekwon Smith, who was killed in an accident on the way home from the party. A passenger and teammate, 17-year-old Randolph Williams, remained in an intensive care unit.

The coach remembered his last words before his players lives were forever changed.

“Y’all be careful and I’ll see you Monday,” he recalled.

Twenty minutes later, Campbell got a call from one of his players who had been following behind Smith’s GMC Jimmy as it traveled down Moseley Road toward Fort Valley.

Smith had lost control of the vehicle and it left the roadway, overturning several times before coming to rest.

“I think he was in shock,” the coach said of the player who had witnessed the crash. “I rushed out there to a scene that was unbelievable. … It comes down to, why weren’t all of them killed in that accident, the way that car looked.”

Smith was pronounced dead at the scene. Williams was critically injured and has a 50 percent chance of paralysis, the coach told hundreds gathered Monday evening at Anderson Stadium.

The community gathering was also for Levi Griggs, a Peach County High School student who was also seriously injured in a separate crash Saturday night, Campbell said.

Griggs was involved in a crash near Ga. 96 and Housers Mill Road. He is in the same intensive care unit, just down the hall from Williams, Campbell said.

“It has been a rough 48 hours,” Campbell said four days before the season starter against Houston County High School. “We need your love and support.”

In the shadow of the Trojan’s stadium, senior student Wante Tukes leaned against a railing with his friend, 17-year-old Trey Carte, Smith’s cousin.

“He was always laid back, chill,” Tukes said of Smith. “If you were down, he’d bring you up.”

“Instantly,” Carte said.

A PROMISING FUTURE

Earlier that Saturday before the team get-together, Erica Smith went to Sam’s Club and bought a giant box of her son’s favorite cereal: Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“I didn’t get a chance to give it to him,” she said Monday afternoon at her Gun Club Road home just east of town.

That cereal was his birthday gift when he turned 18 in May.

“We thought that was a gag gift,” she said. “We thought he was going to be upset. He wasn’t upset at all because he loved that cereal so much.”

Raekwon Smith died exactly three months after his 18th birthday. His mother said they had plans to go vote together, to celebrate his graduation on May 19 and his birthday the next day.

“He was just a happy kid,” Erica Smith said of her son.

When she was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2012, her son helped care for her.

“Sometimes I sort of think that he thought that he was the parent,” she said. “He would take care of me a lot.”

Raekwon Smith was still deciding on what he would do after graduation, but he had several options he was exploring. In his sights were prospects of playing football for Mercer University, attending the college of culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University or joining the Marines, his mom said.

“It’s a hard pill to swallow, but … God is enabling me to stay strong and be positive,” Erica Smith said. She added that students “need to make sure they have their life right, because life is short.”

The funeral service for Raekwon Smith will be held Saturday at 11 a.m. in Peach County High School’s gym with a viewing preceding at 9 a.m. There will be no wake, his mom said.

As for her son’s teammates, Erica Smith said, “I told them to hold their heads high and play hard, because they’ve got to bring that championship home for Raekwon.”

Erica Smith said her son will be buried beside his uncle, Reginald Bernard Smith, who died in 2009 at age 27 after he was shot eight times by Warner Robins police officers who had responded to a large fight at a Waffle House.

This story was originally published August 22, 2016 at 9:06 PM with the headline "Minutes before fatal crash, coach told players leaving pool party to be careful."