Among those who watched as police, paramedics and firefighters scrambled to deal with the chaos and wreckage at a deadly auto crash in Mililani Friday night were the father and brother of 17-year-old Gillian Badua.

"She was still pinned in the car when we got there," said Loreto Badua, 42. "It happened at around 9:30 p.m. I watched it on the 10 o'clock news. Five minutes later my son Geoffrey calls me and says, 'That's Gill.' I go, 'No way!' So, we ran down there."

The community was still stunned yesterday after a 1994 red Volkswagen Jetta plowed into a tree at high speed Friday night, killing the Mililani High School girl and sending two young men to the hospital, one in critical condition.

Badua was a high school senior whom friends knew as Gill (pronounced Jill).

The girl's mother, Michaele Badua, 41, is a Hawai'i Air National Guard staff sergeant stationed in the Middle East.

Loreto Badua said knowing Gillian was inside the Jetta was traumatic for him and his son. "The car was pretty mangled, and it was wrapped around the tree," he said.

According to police, who have started a negligent homicide investigation, Gillian was dead at the scene.

Police say the Jetta was heading north on Lanikuhana Avenue at around 9:20 p.m. when it careened out of control and slammed into a tree 84 feet south of Lea Place. Skid marks stretched for nearly a block.

Police said an 18-year-old man in the front passenger seat was taken to The Queen's Medical Center in critical condition. The 21-year-old driver was at Queen's in serious condition. Both men were from Mililani.

NEIGHBORS COME TO AID

The Honolulu Fire Department reports that firefighters responded to the scene within five minutes of the alarm. But in the hectic moments before fire, police and Emergency Medical Services personnel arrived, folks along Lanikuhana sprang into action.

One of them was Craig Denson, 41, an Army sergeant stationed at Schofield Barracks who recently returned from Iraq. He lives on the corner of Lanikuhana and Manawahine, less than 50 yards from where the Jetta hit the tree.

"I saw the car when they were coming down the road," Denson said yesterday. "They were going pretty fast. And then ... he lost control."

When Denson heard the Jetta hit the tree, he said, he knew the outcome would be bad. He yelled to his daughters, Ariana and Kia, ages 13 and 16, to dial 911. By the time Denson reached the Jetta, he had been joined by neighbors who tried to free the driver.

"His seatbelt, I guess from the impact, had locked, and so we couldn't get him out," said Denson. "... the car was on fire in the back. So all of the neighbors started running home and grabbing fire extinguishers and water hoses."

Although they were able to douse the fire, it kept reigniting. Meanwhile, they had managed to free the driver who motioned for them to help the person in the back seat.

That's when Denson said they realized a girl was trapped in the rear of the vehicle.

"I ran around to see if I could get a better look, and that's when I noticed another young man laying on the ground," he said.

As neighbors tended to the man having convulsions in the street, Denson tried to help the girl. "I reached in and the little girl was in the back seat, pinned, and I grabbed her hand and tried to get a response from her, but I couldn't get a response," he said.

Loreto Badua said Gillian's mother took the news especially hard. Although he and Michaele Badua have been divorced for several years, Loreto said the two remained on friendly terms.

"We got in contact with her last night through the Red Cross," he said. "She should be back Sunday or Monday."

Yesterday, relatives, friends and neighbors tried to make sense of it what had happened.

Ryan Flores, 19, a friend and Mililani High schoolmate of Gillian's, said he also knows the two men who were in the Jetta.

"Gill, she was friendly — although, like everyone, she had her bad days," said Flores. "She liked to party. She liked her dogs and pets and everything. She liked to draw, that's one thing. She was real good at it. She had some nice drawings. She kept a little drawing book."

Flores said Gillian was good friends with the 18-year-old in the passenger seat.

"Every time I saw Gill, this guy was with her. It was not a boyfriend, girlfriend thing — but more like brother, sister ... they were just tight."

Back on Lanikuhana Avenue, Denson was also thinking about family.

"That could have been my child," he said. "... an innocent child, now, whose life is lost."

He made sure his daughters watched rescuers finally remove Badua from the Jetta. He wanted them to know the consequences of driving too fast.

Because, he said, he never wanted to be asked to come to the scene of an accident to identify his own child.

"That's the last thing I ever want to do," he said.

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.