Teens mourn Cobb athlete killed in wreck

Hundreds of teenagers crowded into Marietta’s West Cobb Funeral Home on Monday night to mourn Garrett Reed, a Harrison High athlete killed in a Saturday car wreck.

By 7:30 p.m. Monday, nearly 800 people had stopped by for Reed’s visitation. The crowds were so large that visitors were routed to nearby Macland Church of Christ, and shuttle buses transported family and friends to the funeral home.

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John Spink / jspink@ajc.com

Friends gather Monday morning to create a roadside memorial at the site where Garrett Reed was killed.

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Mikki K. Harris / mkharris@ajc.com

Harrison’s Patrick Keller hugs Garrett Reed (right) for scoring a touchdown against East Paulding October 17, 2008.

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“I’ve been in this business for 22 years, and this is the largest service I’ve seen,” said Chris Messina, general manager for the funeral home.

Reed was driving a 1994 Lexus north on Midway Road when he crossed the center line near Sylvia Drive and hit an oncoming car about 12:30 a.m. Saturday, said Cobb police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce.

Reed, a 16-year-old football player at Harrison High School, died at the scene.

On Monday morning, Harrison principal Donnie Griggers accompanied a group of Reed’s teammates — “everybody that wanted to go” — to the crash site. Reed was a junior wide receiver and defensive back on the football team.

“The kids were very solemn; they needed to grieve,” Griggers said. “They were praying, and talking about how they need to band together and stay together as friends and teammates, and how they cared about Garrett.”

The principal said grief counselors were at school Monday

Tassie Aycock lives on Sylvia Drive and saw the students gathered at a makeshift memorial for Reed. The mother of four has a daughter who is a freshman at Harrison.

“It’s devastating,” Aycock said. “Because I’m a mom, I drive by and just want to cry. [Teenagers] think they’re invincible, but really they aren’t. It could be any of us.”

Griggers called Reed a “nice kid — just a regular kid who came to school and did what he was supposed to do, played sports and was part of the community.”

The driver of the other car in the wreck, Richard A. Reyes, 24, of Dallas, a fraud analyst for Bank of America, suffered a broken knee cap and torn tendons in his leg. He was resting at home Monday.

The funeral for Reed is at 2 p.m. Tuesday at First Baptist Church in Powder Springs.

— Staff writers Mike Morris and Angela Tuck contributed to this article.