washington post ; Dustin Muse
By Candace Rondeaux and Chris Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 7, 2006; 4:06 PM
It was going to be a big year for Dustin Muse. The Governor Thomas Johnson High School junior was about 18 months from graduation, but college football recruiters were already eyeing the 16-year-old starting quarterback. Lean and agile, the Frederick teenager had earned a serious rep for his rifle shot passes.
So when his team's season came to an end in the first round of the playoffs this year, Dustin took it hard. After he got out of classes Wednesday afternoon, he stepped into the low afternoon light, strapped a weighted vest to his chest and began running. He could have taken some time to relax. But he wanted to get ready for next year, said his coach Ben Wright.
No one knew then that there would be no next year for Dustin and that those would be his last laps.
Today Loudoun County sheriff's investigators were still trying to learn the cause of a freak traffic accident in Leesburg that killed Dustin and his sister, Courtney, 13, Wednesday evening. The accident occurred about 6 p.m. near the intersection just outside Leesburg where the Route 15/Route 7 bypass and business Route 15 South split.
Dustin was driving his father's 2000 Jeep Wrangler south on Route 15 with his sister in the front passenger seat when the vehicle veered off the road down a steep culvert and crashed into two trees, said sheriff's spokesman Kraig Troxell. Although both were wearing their seatbelts at the time, Dustin was thrown from the soft-top jeep. Both were pronounced dead at the scene, Troxell said.
About 20 minutes before the accident, Dustin had called his father, Donald Muse, 42, in Leesburg to let him know he and Courtney, an 8th grader at Monacacy Middle School in Frederick were on their way and to ask for a favor, Donald Muse said today. The two had just left Frederick where they live with their mother during the week, and had been planning to celebrate their stepmother Kristi Muse's birthday in Leesburg Wednesday night, said Muse, who shares custody of the two children with his ex-wife.
Always conscientious, Dustin wanted to make sure he didn't show up empty handed, his father said.
"He said, 'Dad, I don't have enough money to buy flowers. Could you get some for Krisiti? I have a card and everything but I wanted to get her flowers," Muse said.
Muse said he became worried when the two didn't show up as planned.
"I knew something was wrong because Dustin is never late," Muse said today between sobs as he surveyed the splintered trees where the Jeep had made an impact. "I looked at the clock. It was 6:37. We started looking for him."
Soon, Muse, a Chevy Chase bank manager, found himself looking on in horror as rescue workers tried to recover his children's bodies from the bottom of the steep culvert. Witnesses said Dustin, who got his driver's license in March, appeared to be driving at the posted 45 m.p.h. speed limit. Alcohol and speed do not appear to be factors in the accident, Troxell said.
Wednesday's accident brought to 18 the total number of traffic fatalities this year in Loudoun, Troxell said. Two of those happened on Route 15, a narrow two-lane road that winds along several steep blinds southward from Frederick to the toward Prince William.
A straight "A" student, Dustin had just been inducted into the National Honor Society, and was a fairly cautious driver, his father said. "Like any other teen he would sometimes go a little fast, but he was a good driver," Muse said.
Next year was going to be a big year for Courtney, too, her father said. A country music lover who played piano and loved to dance, she would have started high school alongside her older brother at Thomas Johnson next year and joined their mother Pam Meehan, who has been a math teacher at the high school for about a decade, said Marita Loose, a spokeswoman for the Frederick County Schools System.
"They were part of the TJ family," she said. "We are grieving on multiple levels."
A man who answered the phone at Meehan's home in Frederick and identified himself as her father said she did not want to comment.
This morning, shortly after homeroom, Thomas Johnson teachers broke the news to their classes. Then football players and cheerleaders gathered in the high school's media room. What started out as a small group, soon ballooned to more than 200 students, said Loose. "It was very quiet," Loose said.
There was a similar stunned silence at Monacacy Middle School, where Courtney was an eighth grader, Loose said. Principal Everett Warren remembered her as a bright young student, who loved animals and making home videos of her family and as someone who "always had a friendly smile and a kind word for everyone."
A memorial is being planned for this weekend.