Candlelight Vigil Tonight for Two Former Las Lomas Students

Friends of Maurice Waters and Christian Bishop have organized a candlelight vigil to take place tonight at the Shell Ridge Open Space to remember the two former Las Lomas High students killed last weekend in a car accident outside Sacramento. 

The vigil will take place 8 to 10 p.m. at the Sutherland Drive entrance of the open space, according to a Facebook page set up for the event. 

Waters, 20, was the older brother of a current student and Bishop, 18,  had  attended Las Lomas as a freshman and sophomore and would have been a senior this year, according to Las Lomas administrators. 

They were among three people who were fatally injured in a crash at about 3 a.m. last Friday in a field east of Sacramento.

On Friday, the two former students were in a Mazda Millenia that was traveling on a road near Sloughhouse, between Sacramento and Rancho Murietta, the Sacramento Bee reported, citing the California Highway Patrol. 

The driver and three passengers had apparently been in Sacramento at a nightclub earlier in the night. They were traveling with a group in another car headed eastbound on Highway 16, bound for a casino in Jackson.

For an unknown reason, the group in the lead car turned right on Sloughhouse Road, then turned around and headed back north, driving fast. The car hit a dip in the road as it approached Highway 16.  

When the car came up over the rise, the vehicle missed the turn and ended up rolling into a field, the Bee said. 

The group in the trailing car found the wrecked car down in a ditch. The passenger in the right front seat, who was the only one wearing a seatbelt, was transported to UC Davis Medical Center in critical condition, the Bee and the CHP said. The driver, 26-year-old Stephen G. Johnson of Rancho Cordova,  was ejected from the car and died at the scene, as did Waters and Bishop, who were passengers in the back seat.