Two Northview Seniors Found Dead in Car Trunk

Tracie Hawlett called home at her curfew time, about 11:30 Saturday night, to tell her mother she and a friend were lost in Ozark on the way home from a party in Headland. The next word her parents heard was the tragic news that they had been found dead on an Ozark roadside.
Witnesses said Hawlett's late-model Mazda 929 was found about 30 yards from the Herring Street-James Street intersection in downtown Ozark, just five blocks from the Dale County Jail, Sunday afternoon.
Sources near the scene said both the bodies of Hawlett and her friend, fellow Northview High School senior J.B. Beasley, were found in the trunk of the car, but the Ozark Police Department was not releasing any information about the crime on Sunday.
Investigators from both the Ozark and Dothan Police Departments, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Dale County Sheriff's Department were on the scene.
Both were 17-year-old students at Northview High School, where on Tuesday they would have begun their senior year at Northview. Instead, their classmates begin the year facing yet another tragedy.
The victims were the third and fourth Northview students to die tragically in the past year. Fifteen-year-old Anthony Bryan is charged with the Feb. 26 murder of his older brother, John David, and the non-fatal shooting of his mother, Paula Bryan. Both brothers were also Northview students.
Adam Gay, a tight end for the Northview Cougars football team, died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident earlier this summer.
When students report to school Tuesday, they will have counseling available if needed, said John Michael Hornsby, Dothan City Schools manager of grants and public information.
"If students need it, we'll provide it," Hornsby said. "You always wonder why something like this happens. All we can do at this point is offer our prayers and support for friends and family."
Darlene Dezso, a therapist with Brightleaf Counseling and Recovery, said the girls' friends and classmates will need time to talk about their feelings of grief and loss. There may even be some guilt and fear, she said.
"They're going to need trauma in-briefing, because they're going to have tremendous shock on top of the impact of the trauma," Dezso said. "They need to keep talking about it with someone who can help de-brief them and separate them from what's happened, how they feel, what they're thinking and how to externalize that.
"It's so much different than your normal grief, although they have to deal with that, too."
Dezso said parents and teachers should look for signs of depression, anxiety, sadness, not being able to function normally, not being able to concentrate, isolation, fear of what's going to happen to them and even survivor guilt.
Within 20 minutes after hearing the latest distressing news Sunday night, Northview band director Tim Gilley was still trying to make sense of the tragedy. Hawlett was a second-year majorette at Northview.
"Of course, your first thoughts go out to the family and what they're going through, their feelings about the tragedy and the loss," Gilley said.
"When you think about tragedies we've suffered at the school in the past, you think it will definitely hit home with our students."
Gilley did not know Beasley, but remembers Hawlett as an "extremely pleasant girl.
"She always had a smile. She had a great sense of humor and was very fun to be around. I think all the students really liked her because of that. I never knew her to be in a bad mood.
"She always seemed happy to see you."