Yuba County teens killed in Arboga crash

They went to the prom together in April — and on Thursday they died in south Yuba County a mile from the Sleep Train Ampitheatre in a single-car accident.

Sonia Solley, 18, was a Wheatland High School cheerleader planning to go to Sierra College. Jacob Scott O'Neal, 17, "never let anything get to him," students remembered.

"You would never see him sad," remembered a youth who graduated last Friday from Wheatland High School, which Plumas Lake resident O'Neal once attended and from where Solley had just graduated.

O'Neal went to the Wheatland Charter Academy briefly before enrolling in the adult and alternative education program of the Marysville Joint Unified School District, students said.

Wheatland resident Solley was "stoked" about her future, said Wheatland High graduate Kylee Holland, 17.

"Everybody loved her," Holland said of Solley. "You could tell her we'd be out of school 10 minutes early and she'd be happy."

Solley was driving a Ford Taurus on Plumas Arboga Road near Forty Mile Road at 5 a.m. when she lost control and swerved to the left, sliding across both traffic lanes and running off the roadway through a fence, overturning and striking a power pole, the California Highway Patrol said.

She was ejected. O'Neal fell out of the passenger door and was found next to the car, the CHP said.

Lana Walker, who works at the amphitheater and saw the Taurus being towed after the accident, said the vehicle was badly damaged.

"We really could not tell what kind of car it was," Walker said. "It was mangled."

The Taurus was traveling at an undetermined high rate of speed, the CHP said, and neither occupant was wearing a seat belt. It has not been determined if alcohol was a factor in the accident, the Highway Patrol said.

Several students from Wheatland High stopped Thursday morning at the accident site, where the path the car had made through the dirt after going off the roadway stopped in front of the downed high-voltage pole.

"He wanted to do something," one student said of O'Neal, remembering his interest in a career in psychology or the law.

Several miles away in Plumas Lake, a former fellow student remembered O'Neal attending a barbecue recently.

"He was just a really outgoing kid," Derin Sullivan, 20, said.

Wheatland High was the site in April — before the school prom — of a program showing students the consequences of drunken driving by the sentencing in the gym of a 25-year-old Yuba City man charged with DUI.

Leah Perez, 17, who attended the event, remembered Solley's reaction to the program.

"She did mention she'd never be like that," Perez said.

A family member at the O'Neal home said Thursday he did not wish talk.

"Today is not a good day," the man said.

Memorial planned

A memorial will be held at 7 p.m. today in the quad at Wheatland High School where people can write their remembrances and condolences.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or at rmccarthy@appealdemocrat.com.