Hill-jumping crash near Rockford that killed teen exposed fatal pattern

PLAINFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Two young women were trying to jump hills on a road south of Rockford before they slammed into a tree on Thanksgiving Day, a report by the Kent County Sheriff’s Office shows.

A Target 8 investigation uncovered a pattern dating back decades on the stretch of road where it happened. It’s costing teenagers their lives.

The violent crash last year on Jericho Avenue NE between Kroes Street NE and 10 Mile Road in Plainfield Township instantly killed the passenger, Nevaeh Downs, 18, of Grand Rapids.

Her best friend, Ella Vece, was driving Downs’ Volkswagen Jetta at the time of the crash.

Both women graduated from Northview High School and were students at Grand Rapids Community College.

In the days after the crash, social media exploded with tributes to Downs, who was described as “truly inspiring” and deeply empathetic, with a “contagious laugh” and “beautiful smile.” Downs was a varsity swimmer, restaurant server and mentor to pre-kindergarten students in her junior and senior years at Northview. A GoFundMe account has raised $6,475 for a scholarship in her name at GRCC.

Downs’ family wrote that they were “gratefully overwhelmed” by the online posts from her friends and peers, which “describe a woman whose beauty goes far beyond physicality.”

“Our hope is that they will hold on to her laughter and memories with no regrets,” her obituary said of those who knew and loved Downs, “because one of Nevaeh’s favorite sayings was, ‘Love Harder.’”

Two months after the crash, on Jan. 19, Kent County’s prosecutor charged Vece, now 20, with reckless driving causing death, a felony. On Monday, she pleaded no contest to a moving violation causing death, a one-year misdemeanor. Sentencing is scheduled for June 27.

Downs’ mom declined an interview but told Target 8 she has forgiven her daughter’s best friend and did not want her charged criminally. She was in court to support her Monday.

VIDEO: “SLOW DOWN A LITTLE BIT”

According to the 18-page incident report obtained by Target 8 through an open records request, Downs and Vece had been trying to jump Jericho’s steepest hill the evening of Nov. 23.

1 killed, 1 hurt in crash near Rockford

The report said Downs, in what would be her final moments, documented her best friend’s effort to catch air on the sharp incline and sudden drop. From her battered cellphone, investigators retrieved video Downs recorded as they raced toward the hill.

“The video is filmed … from the passenger seat … with the girls yelling and laughing as they appear to go airborne over a smaller hill south of the crash scene,” the deputy who reviewed the video wrote. “As they continue driving, (Downs) appears to tell (Vece) to ‘slow down a little bit’ before coming to the large hill at the crash scene.”

It was too late.

“As the vehicle crests the hill,” the crash investigator wrote, “they are met with headlights that appear to startle the driver. The car appears to veer to the right before it sounds like the vehicle runs off the road. The video then ends…”

Later, at the hospital, Vece reportedly told deputies she swerved and lost control after encountering an oncoming vehicle traveling close to the centerline.

The deputy who watched the video noted that it was difficult to see the oncoming vehicle’s exact position but wrote that it did “not appear to be directly head on with the suspect vehicle.”

The Jetta hit a tree with such force that it “sheared off the entire passenger side” and wrapped it around the tree, the deputy reported.

Most of the vehicle landed another 70 or so yards from the tree.

“The passenger seat and the driver’s seat were in two different spots on the road,” recalled Niki Feldkamp, a neighbor who heard the crash and rushed to help.

Toxicology tests showed no evidence that alcohol or drugs played a role in the crash. But excessive speed clearly did, according to the crash report. The Jetta’s event data recorder showed the vehicle exceeded 100 mph as it crested Jericho’s steepest hill.

“I COULD HEAR A GIRL SCREAMING, ‘HELP’”

“An explosion is like the only way I can describe it,” Feldkamp said of the violent boom that reached her living room in the River Bluffs subdivision just west of where the crash happened.

“Right away, my husband was like, ‘What is that?’” Feldkamp recalled. “I’m like, ‘A car accident.’ I could just hear the metal.”

Feldkamp told Target 8 that she called 911, rushed outside and listened amid the inky blackness of the moonless night.

“It was just silent. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything. And then someone started screaming,” she said. “I could hear a girl screaming just, ‘Help,’ just yelling, and so we threw on our shoes and we basically ran through our neighbor’s backyard.”

At first, Feldkamp thought the woman whose desperate screams she heard was alone in the Jetta when it crashed.

“She started asking, ‘Where’s my friend?’” Feldkamp said. “We were like, ‘What is she talking about?’ I thought there were multiple cars because there was so much wreckage on the road. So I walked up a little further and the friend was under the other part of the car.”

Downs was pronounced dead by the ambulance crew.

“It was just a horrible, horrible scene,” Feldkamp said. “To think they’re just young girls probably having fun… And the girl who survived, she was just so scared. She was screaming about her friend and ‘Where is she?’ It was just — it was heartbreaking.”

“DARK, NARROW, NOWHERE TO GO”

The Feldkamps have three young drivers at home and said they have always worried about Jericho’s steepest stretch.

“You don’t see (oncoming) lights until you get to the very top of that hill,” Feldkamp said. “It’s just very, very dark back there and it’s such a narrow road, there’s really nowhere to go. It’s terrifying to drive on that road with new drivers — and there are so many new drivers.”

Half a mile or so south of the hill, Jericho Avenue dead-ends at Kroes Street, directly in front of Rockford High School and its nearly 2,000 students.

“I was contacted by the (deputy based at Rockford High School) who asked for crash details on behalf of Rockford Public Schools,” the investigator on the case wrote. “The deputy stated that in the past, (students have driven) fast in that area in order to ‘jump’ the hill.”

According to the sheriff’s report, on the night of the crash, surveillance cameras in the high school parking lot captured Vece and Downs heading east on Kroes and then north on Jericho.

“The vehicle returns southbound again, coming into the (high school parking lot) and doing a U-Turn,” the deputy wrote.

When the Jetta came back for a third run, the school resource officer who reviewed the video said, the vehicle stopped and the driver and passenger switched seats. It was Downs’ Jetta, but it was Vece’s turn behind the wheel. The video time stamp showed the Jetta left the lot for the last time at 8:32 p.m. Dispatch received an iPhone crash alert at 8:34 p.m.

“ADD THIS TO THE PILE OF FATALS”

According to records reviewed by Target 8, Downs was the sixth person to die in five fatal crashes on or near Jericho’s steepest peak since 1966.

In addition, there have been at least four nonfatal hill-jumping crashes since 2004, including a serious injury crash in 2022.

Of the six who died over six decades, four were teenagers.

“We can add this to the pile of fatals,” defense attorney Keary Sawyer remarked of the Thanksgiving Day crash.

Sawyer is representing the driver, Vece.

“I think the case should be dismissed,” Sawyer told Target 8 in an interview before his client reached a plea deal. “Or at least reduce it to a misdemeanor or something that’s not going to make this a double tragedy. Because we’ve already lost one young lady.”

Sawyer is pushing the Kent County Road Commission to make the hill on Jericho safer.

“Quite frankly, it amounts to an ‘attractive nuisance’ under the law,” Sawyers said. “Like a gravel pit or sand mound that draws kids and then collapses on them, or a swimming pool without a fence around it.”

While Sawyer acknowledged it does not excuse the mistake Vece made that night, he said the hill is too steep, too narrow and, for teens, too tempting.

“You know, teens don’t always use the best judgment,” Sawyer said. “There’s a reason why both of these young ladies in a joint venture went out to take the jump on Jericho Road. All of the kids at the high school knew about (the hill), just as I knew about it in 1966. C’mon.”

In April 1966, Sawyer was an eighth grader in Rockford when he said two of his friends went hill-jumping on Jericho.

“Steve McConnell and Tom Darling,” Sawyer said. “They were in ninth grade. Tom Darling had a sports car and they took it out on Jericho Road, took the jump, flipped it and it killed them both.”

According to a Grand Rapids Press article from the time McConnell, 15, was a passenger in the vehicle that “skidded out of control on Jericho Ave. NE south of 10-Mile Road and struck a tree.” McConnell was killed in the crash. Darling, 16, died three days later.

“What about the next one?” Sawyer wondered. “It’s a hazard that needs to be fixed.”

STUDENTS IN 1978: “STOP HILL-JUMPING”

That’s also what Rockford High School students argued after the September 1978 death of another teenager on Jericho’s hill.

Rick Armstrong, 17, was a passenger in a friend’s car. He and his friend were “northbound down the steep hill (on Jericho) when their car went out of control and struck a tree,” according to an article in the Grand Rapids Press.

The article, published in November 1978, highlighted the efforts of students in the wake of Armstrong’s death.

“Students Push For Improvements to Stop Hill-Jumping,” declared the headline.

Forty-five years before Downs’ death, a student-led petition convinced the Kent County Road Commission to order an “engineering profile” of the hill to investigate potential improvements and their associated costs.

“The action of the commission was prompted by signatures from 1,000 Rockford residents, mostly Rockford High School students, who claim the road is too narrow and too short at its crest,” Press reporter Lois Servaas wrote. “The petitions were signed to urge road commissioners to ‘cut the hill or re-engineer it’ to make it safer.”

The article did not conclude that hill-jumping caused the crash that killed Armstrong. The report said the investigation was ongoing, but the driver may have been distracted by a dropped pencil.

But students’ safety concerns were heard.

“I guess what these students are saying is that it’s possible to drive safely over the hill, but as long as the hill is there, drivers are going to try to jump it,” the article quoted Road Commission Vice Chair Elmer Smith.

It’s not clear what the engineering study found, but in 1979, the road commission designated Jericho a Natural Beauty Road, which prevents the county from clearing trees or making changes to the road itself.

More than a decade later, as Rockford Public Schools prepared to move its high school to Kroes Street, a local attorney implored residents to demand safety improvements to Jericho’s hill.

“As scenic as the road is, it has many times proved a deadly temptation for Rockford School Children,” Neil Blakeslee wrote in a letter to the editor of The Rockford Squire. “Leaving that deadly Jericho hill in its present state is the equivalent of signing death warrants for more of our children in the future.”

Several months later, in May 1992, neighbors on Jericho argued against lowering the hill in a letter to the Plainfield Township supervisor.

“We were unanimous in agreeing that if the hill is lowered and the road improved and widened, it would create more traffic, higher speeds and more problems,” the letter signed The Residents of Jericho Road read.

The neighbors suggested other options like making the road one-way or lowering the speed limit to 45 mph with police enforcement, but the road commission rejected those ideas.

“The best controls (sic) of this entire situation is in the hands of the parents of the teenage drivers and the school officials who permit students to drive vehicles to and from school. Also, with the law enforcement agencies who enforce the speed limits and traffic conduct,” the commission’s managing director wrote in a letter to neighbors obtained by Target 8 through a public records request.

TWO MORE CRASHES INTO TREES

On July 31, 2012, shortly before 4 a.m., a passerby called 911 after spotting a vehicle wrapped around a tree on Jericho.

According to the Kent County Sheriff’s Office, 40-year-old Christopher VanTimmeren was driving south at a high rate of speed when he lost control and hit a tree. VanTimmeren’s manner of death was deemed “accidental.”

Two years later, in the early morning hours of May 21, 2014, a passing driver spotted a car that had crashed into a tree on Jericho north of Peters Creek. William Hayes, 60, was found dead in his vehicle of “multiple blunt force injuries,” according to his death certificate. Records show Hayes’ manner of death was ruled “indeterminate,” meaning authorities were unsure if the death was accidental.

Autopsy reports show toxicology tests on VanTimmeren and Hayes found no evidence that drugs or alcohol played roles in either case, but authorities said neither man wore a seat belt. Reports described conditions at the time as “wet” in VanTimmeren’s case and “rainy” in Hayes’.

TOWNSHIP: “FULL CONFIDENCE” IN ROAD COMMISSION

Using the county’s public mapping tool, Target 8 determined the slope of Jericho’s hill measures 14.4%, which places it among the county’s steepest inclines.

The recommended slope for newly constructed roads with characteristics similar to Jericho is 9%, according to a publication of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

However, guidelines also advise that existing hills can remain unless there’s a concentration of crashes that warrants change.

Plainfield Township, where Jericho Avenue is located, referred Target 8 to the road commission, noting that townships have no authority over roads.

“Plainfield Township holds the Kent County Road Commission in high regard and has full confidence in their ability to construct and maintain roads that are safe for our community,” Township Superintendent Cameron Van Wyngarden wrote in an email to Target 8.

The Kent County Road Commission told Target 8 it could not grant an interview for this report because the agency had received notice of a potential lawsuit involving the road.

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Jamie and Niki Feldkamp believe installing lights, better signage and additional guardrails on the hill might help. But they also recognize drivers have to change their behavior.

“If people are going to go fast, I don’t know what your options are,” Niki Feldkamp said.

Other neighbors told Target 8 they want the speed limit dropped to 45 mph.

No one brought up lowering the hill, but most, including the Feldkamps, said they would be open to anything that would make the road safer.

Nevaeh Downs’ mom, who knew nothing of the hill on Jericho Avenue — her daughter didn’t go to Rockford High School — told Target 8 she hopes her daughter’s death will prompt conversations between parents and teen drivers, safety improvements on Jericho, and an end to its deadly allure.

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