Boy Killed While Filming Pedestrian Safety Video (Run Over By Car)

[matcom]

<snip>

One video project already was completed, and another was set to begin soon. So Nick Johnson, 16, of Clarkfield, Minn., and two friends from Yellow Medicine East High School apparently decided to get a jump on their new assignment early Saturday.
The subject would be pedestrian safety, and in the end, it would claim Johnson's life four days later -- the result of injuries sustained when the teen was accidentally pinned under a car while acting out a role in the project.

"They were good kids doing what good kids do," Principal Karen Norell said Thursday. "How could things go so bad?"

Johnson died about a half-hour before a prayer vigil for him Wednesday at Augustana Lutheran Church in Clarkfield, and the death was announced to a church crowded with classmates and members of the community 140 miles west of the Twin Cities.

On Thursday night, at Avera-McKennan Hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D., doctors were preparing to remove his organs and tissues for donation, said his mother, Jolene Johnson.

Nick had made the donation request when he got his driver's license.

"He was just a super kid," his mother said. "Thoughtful. Considerate. If I could've picked a son, I couldn't have picked a better one."

Among those in town hurting most from the tragedy, the principal said, were its smallest citizens, friends of Nick Johnson's three younger siblings, with whom his mother said he always goofed around.

About 6:45 a.m. Saturday, police say, Johnson and his friends were working on the video project, which called for one person to drive, the second to shoot footage from within the car and the third -- Johnson -- to pretend he'd been struck by the vehicle.

In performing his stunt, Nick Johnson jumped onto the hood and then slid off the front. He became trapped under the car when the driver, who got out to check on him, didn't put the car into park.

Jolene Johnson said the two friends, whom she declined to name, were in Sioux Falls from the day of the accident until Johnson died.

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/784672.html