GIBSONSTON — Heads down and candles in hand, about 200 students stood on the front lawn of East Bay High School on Wednesday night to mourn two fellow students who died in what authorities called a tragic accident earlier this week.
Dorian Andres Gomez Poehlmann, 17, and Emily Rose Sabow, 14, the East Bay students who died of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning, brought the student body together in ways it had never been before, students said.
"We've never been like this as a school," said Keajah Bishop, 17. "It's always been so segregated."
The vigil was student-run. Courtnee Thaxton, 17, had known Dorian since the sixth grade. She didn't want people to forget him, so she organized a time for everyone to grieve and support one another.
Thaxton said Poehlmann, a senior, was a well-liked baseball player. His mom's recent move to St. Petersburg meant he would have to change schools — something that upset Thaxton and others.
Before he left East Bay about two weeks ago, he told Thaxton, "I just gotta go. I'll see you soon."
"That's the last time I saw him," she said.
Bishop remembered Sabow, a freshman, as a leader on the junior varsity volleyball team who always wore a smile — and was always forgetting her shoes for practice. She also was good with makeup and a starter for the team.
Friends said the two were more friends than they were a couple but had been seeing each other for at least a few months.
Poehlmann's family discovered the two in the garage of his mother's St. Petersburg home. His mother thought they were missing, not realizing they had returned home before finding the bodies inside the family's 2002 Mitsubishi on Monday morning.
Police don't suspect foul play.
Friends struggled on Wednesday to understand why the accident struck two beloved people.
Standing in front of the crowd, student pastor B.J Swoager, a friend of Poehlmann's, told students, "It's more important than ever to light a candle for hope."