High school students mourn loss of classmate after crash

LANCASTER COUNTY, S.C.,None — Students at Andrew Jackson High School are leaning on each other after one of their own was killed in a car accident.

Kristen Tinsley, 16, was a junior at the school of roughly 600 students in rural Lancaster County.

She was driving to school last Monday on New Hope Road when she lost control of her car and hit a utility pole. Troopers still don't know how it happened. They do know that Tinsley was not drinking, speeding, texting or talking on the phone. Yet somehow she left the road.

Tinsley died in a Columbia hospital four days later on Friday morning. Her many friends still don't believe it.

"I thought it was just going to be, you know, a fender bumper or something like that, and we could pick back up and get back to normal," said senior Dixon Hill.

Instead, normal now doesn't include a friendly, very outgoing girl whose passion was drama.

"It's like a dream. I mean, it hasn't hit me yet. I don't think it's hit any of us yet," said Shelby Lewis, who called Tinsley her best friend.

Their drama teacher, Joe Timmons, told channel 9 he's just trying to keep the kids busy. They had to a cancel a performance that Tinsley was in, but he's trying to stay upbeat for his students.

"We tore down the set, just trying to keep our hands busy, so we'll have busy minds," Timmons said. "It's tough as a teacher to stay positive."

Jordyn Daniels recently moved to Lancaster County and became close to Tinsley. She admired her because she was her own person.

"You either like her the way she was or you just got over it. She didn't care what anybody else thought of her," Daniels said.

Tinsley's funeral is Wednesday, and several Andrew Jackson students will take part in it.

Dozens of them have written personal messages on a large poster in the front entrance of the school. They are messages of love, funny stories and well wishes for her family.

The drama class has also started a scholarship in her name. The Kristen Alexandra Tinsley scholarship will help pay expenses for theater students who have difficulty traveling to performances.

Troopers told Channel 9 they are still investigating the crash.

WSOC