Sixteen-year-old Kent Sanson had his entire life ahead of him before everything shattered in a split second on a dark Louisiana blacktop. The Deville teenager never made it back home from an early morning drive that ended in absolute disaster. It is the kind of sudden tragedy that leaves a small town completely numb and questioning how things went so wrong so fast.
The nightmare unfolded in the pitch-black hours before dawn on a Friday morning. Kent was riding along with six other young people inside a 2011 Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. They were cruising down Hunt Road, right near the edge of the Dewey Wills Wildlife Management Area, when the trip took a fatal turn.
Just before five in the morning, the heavy pickup truck suddenly went spinning out of control. The driver, eighteen-year-old Reese McKenzie, couldn’t keep the vehicle on the roadway as they traveled northbound. The truck veered sharply off the pavement, hitting the dirt shoulder and flipping over violently in the darkness.
What made the wreck so incredibly devastating was a single, tragic choice shared by almost everyone inside. Kent was not wearing his seat belt when the truck started rolling. Without anything to hold him safe inside the cab, the violent force of the rollover threw him and several other passengers straight out into the night.
Emergency crews rushed to the rural scene after getting the emergency call at around 4:49 a.m. But by the time help arrived on that lonely stretch of road, it was already too late for the young teenager. Kent suffered massive, fatal injuries from the impact and was pronounced dead right there at the crash site.
The destruction did not stop with Kent, as the remaining teenagers paid a heavy price for the unbuckled ride. McKenzie and five other young passengers were also completely unrestrained during the terrifying rollover. All five of those passengers survived but suffered moderate injuries, requiring fleet ambulances to rush them to a local hospital.
Now, a local family is forced to bury a child while state investigators piece together the grim details of the wreck. Authorities heavily suspect that impaired driving played a major role in the crash, and they have already taken toxicology samples for official testing. For Kent’s loved ones, the painful lesson about seat belts and mixing substances comes at the highest price imaginable.
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