School’s Extended Family Mourns Teacher

Carrie Phillips, a month shy of her 25th birthday, had worked as a teacher and coach at Turning Point School only a short time, but she seemed to turn everyone around her -- students, parents and colleagues -- into her biggest fans.

So it was no surprise that students chatted eagerly with her Wednesday afternoon as she escorted them back to school from a Frisbee tournament at a nearby park in Culver City.

As they walked single file on a sidewalk, with Phillips bringing up the rear, a car driven by another young woman jumped the curb and barreled into them.

The crash killed Phillips and injured eight students.

On Thursday, investigators were still trying to sort out what happened in the freakish accident. But at the private school, parents and students were convinced that her death was the ultimate sacrifice of a teacher who gave much of herself to her pupils.

“My daughter’s sense of it is that Carrie acted as a human shield,” said Andra Vaccaro, whose daughter Alexandra, 14, was in the group of 15 teenagers.

Meanwhile, the driver, Laura Samayoa, 20, was in Los Angeles County Jail awaiting charges, along with her passenger and estranged boyfriend, Reynaldo Cruz, 19.

Samayoa and Cruz were driving along National Boulevard, hoping that a ride would cool down a heated argument they were having over Cruz’s desire to date another woman, police said.

But the argument flared, and Samayoa’s Volkswagen Jetta barreled up over the curb.

“We’re trying to figure out who was most at fault,” Culver City Police Lt. Dean Williams said.

The spot where Phillips died quickly became a shrine to her.

On Thursday, parents, students and friends added colorful bouquets, candles and posters at the site, where blood still stained the sidewalk as well as the shrubbery’s leaves and branches, and where the glass from smashed car windows glinted in the sunlight.

“I know she gave her life for those children,” said actress Sheryl Lee Ralph, whose son, Etienne Maurice, was one of the students with Phillips.

“Coach Phillips in whatever way took the brunt of that impact,” she said. “I know she did.”

Maurice, 14, said he had been talking to Phillips minutes before the car struck. He walked away to catch up to a friend a few feet away, he said. He heard honking and shouted, “Run, the car is going to hit us!”

He saw Phillips fly into the air and land motionless in the bushes, he said. He yelled for her to speak, but no words came.

Maurice stayed to help some of his injured friends, some of whom were lifted out of their sneakers by the impact.

He refused to go to school Thursday, haunted by memories of his friends lying injured on the sidewalk and of a basketball game he had played with Phillips the day before she died.

“I really loved Coach Phillips,” he said. “If you needed any help, she was there. If you had any problems in math, she would help you. If you wanted to know how to make a jump shot in basketball, she was there. If you weren’t acting right, she’d put you in your place.

“Just before, she gave me a great grade in math for my past report card, saying how I had improved and how I had become such a leader,” he recalled. “That really touched me.”

Ralph credited Phillips’ firm encouragement with helping her son finally master math.

“She’s the kind of teacher you want. She’s young, she’s excited. She had a way to engage students in the class,” she said. “She was a great teacher.”

The accident occurred a few days before Phillips was supposed to help chaperon the school’s 25 eighth-graders on a trip to Washington, D.C.

Many of those students were involved in the accident. School officials have canceled the trip.

“The teachers are having trouble,” Vaccaro said.

In addition to teaching math, Phillips coached the girls in basketball and volleyball.

Students and parents said Phillips would happily go the extra mile for her students, whether in physical education or math classes.

“This young gal was very loved by the coaches and students,” said Cathlene Rosha, whose daughter, Claudia, attends third grade at Turning Point. “My daughter was waking up all night and asking, ‘What happened to Coach Phillips?’ and ‘Where is she now?’ Everyone today is like cement. We can hardly move.”

Rosha said grief counselors spent the day at the school, talking with students, parents and teachers. Many students wept. Deborah Richman, the head of the school, called parents with updates throughout the day using an automated calling system.

Rhonda Alan, the mother of two students, said the school prides itself on a balance of challenging academics and nurturing. The school has classes for preschool through eighth grade.

“It really is a family,” she said.

Friends lauded Phillips as a passionate athlete who played soccer, basketball and flag football; an avid Lakers fan; and a teacher and coach who glowed when talking about her students.

The UCLA graduate, who wore her auburn hair just past her shoulders and smiled often, played on the Gold Diggers volleyball team in a Westside league. She shared an apartment in Santa Monica.

Samayoa lived nearby in West Los Angeles, growing up near Cruz, said Cruz’s attorney, Peter Navarro. They had dated for years and had a 2-year-old son together.

After the crash, one witness said, the pair climbed out through a car window, stepped over the fallen teacher and ran off.

Samayoa, a dental assistant, told authorities that she had been arguing during the ride and that Cruz grabbed the steering wheel, forcing the car onto the sidewalk.

Her attorney, Scott Nord, said Cruz “hit her several times and then grabbed the wheel, jerking it.”

Three weeks ago, Samayoa went to the district attorney’s child support unit to help her get payments from Cruz, Nord said.

“That’s when he became extremely aggravated,” he said.

But Navarro denied Thursday that Cruz was to blame. Rather, he said, Samayoa took her hands off the wheel to “punch him repeatedly” after he said he wanted to move on.

Cruz works as a security guard in a commercial building in Santa Monica

Each is being held at county jail on $400,000 bail. Police said they expected to charge them with vehicular manslaughter and possibly with fleeing the scene of an accident.