Two teens killed in a car crash in Great Bend Township last week were laid to rest following funeral services held on Saturday and Monday.
Alex Hinkley, 18, New Milford, and Brett Sterling, 18, Hallstead, were pronounced dead at the scene following an Aug. 4 motor vehicle accident on Old Lackawanna Trail, better known as Old Route 11.
Funeral services for Hinkley were held Saturday at the Parker Hill Community Church, Dickson City.
At the funeral for Sterling held Monday at the Tuttle-Yeisley Funeral Home in Hallstead, the young man was described by his friends as a caring and compassionate man who always put his family first.
Josh Mess said, “He was one of my best friends. He was one of the kindest people I know.”
Mess continued, “No matter how far away I was, he would always find a way to come see me.”
Mess also said Sterling “loved to play X-Box” and work on cars and that Sterling had recently helped him put a clutch in his four-wheeler.
Kevin Smith said Sterling was “always under the hood of something. There was nothing he couldn’t do. He was one of the greatest mechanics I ever met.”
Amber Hack used to ride the school bus with Sterling. She said he used to good-naturedly pick on her on the ride to school and the two became close friends.
“He was a good kid. He’d do anything for anybody,” said Hack, who also spoke during the service.
She said that to Sterling, “It didn’t matter who you were – if you were the most bad talked about person – he looked right through it to get to know the real you.”
According to police, the teens were traveling south on the road at a high rate of speed at about 12:30 a.m. when the 2006 Honda Accord hit a rock step and an embankment and was launched into the air.
Both men were ejected from the vehicle. The car came to rest, on its roof, in a creek bed.
Sterling was a former student at Blue Ridge High School in the spring of 2009, according to principal R. Scott Jeffery on Friday.
He said the accident was “tragic” and the school made available grief counselors to anyone who requested them.
Hinkley would have been a senior at Mountain View High School this fall.
Principal Andrew Doster said at Mountain View’s school board meeting Monday night that grief counseling would be made available to students when they return to classes on Aug. 25.
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