West Chester, PA : 18-year-old Mark Valentine killed in a car crash on Thursday December 31 2015.

That's how friends remember 18-year-old Mark Valentine, who was killed in a car crash hours after Christmas.
Mr. Valentine, of West Chester, was in the back seat of the car when the driver lost control of the car and swerved off of Beckett Ridge Boulevard, crashing into a light pole, then a tree. One of his friends, Tristan Lacey, 18, was driving the car.
Lacey was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, operating a vehicle while impaired, underage consumption/possession/purchase of liquor and failure to control. He blew a 0.106 during a blood alcohol content test after the crash, according to police reports.
The death “was shocking. It took me a while to wrap my head around it when I first heard,” said 18-year-old Preston Schrader, a friend of Mr. Valentine’s. “It’s crazy how life can change so quickly.”
Schrader met Mr. Valentine his senior year at Grand River Valley, a boarding school in Austinburg, up in northeast Ohio's Ashtabula County. Mr. Valentine was a year younger than Schrader and attended the boarding school until his junior year, before transferring to Cincinnati Christian Schools in Fairfield.
While at Grand River Academy, the two lived in the same dorm, had Spanish class together and drove the four-and-a-half hour drive back home to Cincinnati for breaks.
“It was such a small boarding school, you see each other every day,” Schrader said. “You’re brothers.”
Schrader has talked with other students at Grand River who are all still trying to comprehend Mr. Valentine's death. He said Mr. Valentine was the student who the younger guys looked up to and could always count on for a good joke.
“I’m going to miss Mark a lot because he made everyone laugh,” Schrader said. “He was one of the nicest kids I’ve ever met.”
Schrader said Mr. Valentine had plans to go to college. They always talked about what their lives would be like in the future, as their friendship continued.
“I’m really sad that he’s gone,” Schrader said.
Schrader was playing video games with Lacey and Mr. Valentine at his house in Clifton just days before the accident. He said Lacey and Mr. Valentine were always together.
“It’s a horrible situation, but he’s a good kid,” Schrader said of Lacey, who was arrested on Monday. “He’s probably devastated about the whole thing.”
Mr. Valentine is survived by his parents, Ashley and Debbie (Steel) Valentine, and his brother, Eric.
Visitation will be held at Hodapp Funeral Home at 8815 Cincinnati-Columbus Road, West Chester, on Friday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Funeral services will be at the same funeral home Saturday at 10 a.m. with burial at Rose Hill Burial Park in Fairfield Township.

Source:
Teen killed in crash remembered by friends as a comedian