Oak Grove Road runs southwest from Lakeside High beneath majestic pines and hardwoods, past old ranch houses and new mansions. With two lanes and a double yellow line, it is not built for speed. But near Cadillac Drive, it opens up to a long straightaway. A slight downward slope facilitates acceleration.

About half a mile from the high school, the road curves to the left. If you go along this road today, and if you round this curve, you come upon an arresting sight. In the distance, a girl or young woman seems to be staring at you. Her picture appears on a large white poster attached to a towering sweetgum tree. Her face is serene, almost smiling. Sunlight colors the water behind her, brightening a few strands of her hair. A few words accompany the picture. They read, in part,

As she prepared to depart for college, her last Christmas wish was: “Let’s spend more time together since I will be leaving soon.” And we did.

Like everyone else, we never imagined this could happen to us until it did.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Her name was Sophia Lekiachvili. She was known for kind words and good advice. Friends called her Sophie. She had a mother and a father and a brother who loved her. She was a senior at Lakeside who almost made it to graduation. Instead her journey ended here, at the curve on Oak Grove Road.

The Oak Grove 100 was an attempt to reach 100 mph on a two-lane road with a speed limit of 35. But in the long aftermath of Sophie’s death, it was possible to see it another way: as a percentage. When the time came for the distribution of guilt, there were 100 percentage points to hand out. Who should get them? How many each?

These were very large questions. Moral and legal responsibility are not always the same. Nevertheless, about nine months after the crash, prosecutors and a grand jury divided the criminal liability among three people.

Some would go to the young woman behind the wheel of the blue Mazda SUV that hit a tree and overturned just after midnight on Feb. 24, 2024.

And some would go to two other people who were not driving on Oak Grove Road that night.

What linked them to the crash? That was a long and debatable story. It continued the trend of parents facing legal jeopardy after young people break the law. It confronted a judge with a pattern of dangerous and illicit behavior from hundreds of inhabitants of the Lakeside school district. And it had some connection to one piece of evidence a police officer found inside the overturned vehicle.

An open bottle of wine.

***

One day in March, about two years after the crash, Ananya Rao gave her first interview to a reporter. She was home from Athens, where she was a freshman finance major at the University of Georgia, and she’d forgotten to bring her hearing aid. But that was all right, because she could still hear normally from her left ear. And although her memory wasn’t quite what it had been before the crash, she could still remember the two friends she lost that night.

Sophie Lekiachvili, the front-seat passenger, who died from blunt-force trauma.

And Hannah Hackemeyer, the driver, who was cut by broken glass but survived.

Credit: DeKalb County Sheriff's Office

Credit: DeKalb County Sheriff's Office

Ananya was in the back seat. She woke up in the dark at the scene with no memory of the collision. She had a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae and a subdural hematoma, which is a traumatic brain injury that involves blood leaking inside the skull. At the hospital, her mother gave her the news.

Sophie didn’t make it, she said.

Which girl was Ananya’s best friend? They both were, in the way that emotions can sometimes transcend the strict definition of words. During the interview, Ananya said Hannah had been her best friend. She said the same about Sophie. Ananya knew Hannah first, in elementary school and then through Lakeside’s gymnastics team, where they both performed on the balance beam. Hannah and Sophie were seniors when Ananya was a junior. On their last night together, the three watched Sophie’s little brother’s lacrosse game together and went to Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt together and baked an apple pie together at Ananya’s house.

They also drank red wine together. And ordered pizza. And ate the apple pie.

When Ananya came home from the hospital and attended a celebration of life for Sophie, Hannah was there. Ananya says they greeted each other, but mostly they remained apart.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter made repeated and unsuccessful efforts to interview Hannah and her parents for this story. Her attorney, Michael Hawkins, declined to answer any questions from a list sent by email. He wrote, “Leave the Hackemeyers alone.”

Credit: Thomas Lake

Credit: Thomas Lake

Ananya went back to school. The spring of 2024 was a strange time at Lakeside High. Besides Sophie, four other Lakeside students were killed in vehicle crashes that year. Another student died after a long illness. According to Principal Susan Stoddard, the school lost six students that year, four from the class of ‘24. The grief was palpable. Later, at graduation, four empty caps sat on four empty chairs.

Lakeside had a slogan: No Viking Walks Alone. Stoddard knew the students needed guidance on safe driving. After a Lakeside assembly with Lutzie 43 Foundation executive director Mike Lutzenkirchen, a Marietta resident who lost his son Philip in a 2014 crash that involved speed and alcohol, the young Vikings received lanyards and checklists reminding them to take “43 Key Seconds” before driving. Clear head. Clear hands. Clear eyes. And click your seat belt.

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

People were nice to Ananya that spring. But also people stared at her. So much, she said, that she felt like “the elephant in the room.” Hannah remained free as the police investigation continued. At some point, she returned to school. Then she left again, apparently continuing her studies on her own, and graduated at the end of the school year. Ananya says she was invited to a graduation party for Hannah and two other students. She did not attend.

The summer passed, and Ananya’s senior year began. One day in December, she got a notification on her phone from the Ring doorbell at her house.

There was motion at the front door. It was a police officer. Arrest warrants had been issued for both of her parents.

***

On Dec. 4, 2024, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston stood at a lectern marked with her office’s logo: a woman holding a sword in her right hand and the scales of justice in her left. Boston grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, and still had a faint Baltimore accent. Her mother had been a schoolteacher and Boston had a teacher’s gentle manner and studious tone. She expressed condolences to Sophie’s loved ones. She acknowledged investigators who worked on the case. And then, in front of the news cameras, she laid out some facts about the night of Sophie’s death.

The Mazda’s Airbag Control Module had given investigators a record of Hannah’s speed. It said she exceeded the speed limit by more than 60 mph. A second before the crash, she was going 98.

“The car’s computer also revealed she never tapped the brakes,” Boston said.

Boston did not mention the Oak Grove 100 or the Oak Grove Challenge. But she had notes, later obtained by the AJC through an open-records request, and one said, “We are looking into whether the Oak Grove Challenge may have played a role in the crash.”

Georgia law presumes that a driver is impaired with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08 or higher. But for drivers under 21, that threshold is much lower. It’s .02. And a charge called “DUI less safe” can be used against drivers with lower blood-alcohol levels. Investigators measured Hannah’s blood-alcohol concentration at .046. Her criminal charges included DUI under 21, DUI less safe, reckless driving, possession of an open container of alcohol, first-degree vehicular homicide and serious injury by vehicle. That last charge related to Ananya’s injuries: “ear, hearing organs, skull, and brain,” according to the indictment. In response to a question about penalties, the district attorney said Hannah was looking at 30 years.

Credit: Henri Hollis/AJC

Credit: Henri Hollis/AJC

But there was more to the story, Boston said.

“While Hannah Hackemeyer was the one behind the wheel that terrible night, we have determined that she was not the only one responsible for what happened.”

Hannah, Sophie and Ananya spent the evening at the Rao home. According to Boston, they had wine in the kitchen in view of Sumanth and Anindita Rao.

“Ananya’s parents knew the girls had been drinking,” she said. “But they still let them get into a car and leave the house. With an open bottle of wine in the front seat.”

“Less than 30 minutes later,” Boston said, “a little more than a half-mile away, that decision would prove deadly.”

The Raos were indicted on three charges, including reckless conduct, because they allegedly encouraged and promoted underage alcohol consumption and allowed underage drinkers to drive away; and involuntary manslaughter, because Sophie died as a result of that allegedly reckless conduct.

The Raos pleaded not guilty and went free on $25,000 bonds. In court filings, their attorneys vigorously contested the charges. They argued that “the Raos’ mere presence while the girls were drinking alcohol, as a matter of law, is not a crime.”

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Boston’s notes for the news conference mentioned two cases in which underage drinking and driving led to deaths and then criminal charges for other people. In both those other cases, one from Ohio and one from Georgia, the adults were accused of supplying the alcohol to the underage drivers.

The Rao case was different. Prosecutors had no evidence they had provided the wine. The Raos were not charged with furnishing alcohol to a minor.

Ronald S. Cook, a New York criminal-defense attorney and legal commentator, told the AJC in an email that a prosecution like this was “extremely rare.” He wrote, “Allowing underage drinking is irresponsible and often illegal. The harder question is whether the law should treat parents as criminally responsible for the extreme, independent decisions of an adult driver. That’s what makes this case so significant.”

Boston had been district attorney since 2017. She knew a few things about death and culpability. Her prosecutors had handled the case of a man who beat and killed his girlfriend’s 22-month-old son. A man who broke all his girlfriend’s ribs, beating and strangling her to death in front of her 12-year-old son. A man who shot his wife to death and put her body in the car with their four children. And a man who strangled his pregnant 19-year-old fiancee and hid her body in a shallow grave.

Despite those other cases, replete with cruelty and intentional violence, Boston made a striking pronouncement. She was talking about Sumanth and Anindita Rao, blaming them for Sophie’s death.

“As a prosecutor and a mother of two teenage daughters,” Boston said, “I have never seen a more egregious disregard for safety and well-being of young people as I have in this case.”

***

The Rao house sits on a hilltop with a commanding view of the cul-de-sac below. It has two stories, two garage doors and a basement. It is generally the color of butter, or shortbread, and is now what some would call an empty nest. In 2023 and 2024, according to the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, it was the scene of multiple crimes.

When it comes to the safety and well-being of young people, there is more than one philosophy. It tends to be easier if they’re uninterested in alcohol. Some parents forbid drinking, which works for some families. In others, the rebellious teenager drinks elsewhere. Which is why certain parents use another strategy. They let the teenagers drink at home. Sometimes they let them invite friends. This way, the thinking goes, at least they’ll be under some kind of supervision.

The more parents drink, the less effective this risk-management strategy becomes. An investigator’s affidavit said the Raos were drunk on the night of the crash. Instead of driving, they walked about half a mile to the crash scene and took an Uber to the hospital.

The Raos were respected in Oak Grove and elsewhere. Sumanth was an executive for a small Canadian airline; he also helped take care of the baseball field at Lakeside High. Anindita was a senior health scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who also provided foster care for dogs. They had two children at Lakeside: their son, Nitin, a baseball player who graduated in 2023, and Ananya, who was two years behind him. Authorities say it was between April and October 2023 — the end of Nitin’s senior year and the start of Ananya’s junior year — that the Raos maintained a disorderly house that disturbed the neighborhood. This, according to Georgia law, is a misdemeanor.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

At issue were “four main parties” the Raos hosted, according to an investigator’s affidavit. They were frequent and memorable enough that some Lakeside students called this home the Party House, the affidavit stated. There was an after-prom party on April 21. An end-of-school party May 24. A homecoming party whose date was not specified in the affidavit. And a Halloween party on October 28.

“It was stated in interviews that alcohol is always present at every party, and there’s usually a minimum of 40-60 High School kids attending the party,” wrote Supervising Investigator Christopher Hollowood of the DA’s office. “The front entrance of the house has an open floor plan and kids can be seen everywhere. After the kids were drinking at the party some of them could be seen driving away from the house. Also during the investigation, we spoke with the neighbors of Mr. and Mrs. Rao who advised they would receive text messages from Mrs. Rao about the parties and recalled receiving a text before (one) party stating ‘the parties would not be like FRAT ROW like the last few times.’”

Dave and Blair Powell lived next door to the Raos at the time. In an interview with the AJC, the Powells said the Raos had usually been good neighbors. The Rao children babysat for the Powell children. Sumanth Rao cooked for the Powells during the pandemic. It was all fine, the Powells said, until the Rao children got old enough to have parties.

These parties left the Powells with a kaleidoscope of bad memories. Huge limousines on the cul-de-sac, lights flashing as Mrs. Powell lay in bed. The Powell children crying, unable to sleep. One or more party guests urinating on the Powells’ garbage cans. Mr. Powell trying to back his vehicle “through a sea of kids,” one of whom yelled at him. Mrs. Powell counting more than 200 party guests leaving the Rao backyard.

Mrs. Powell said she sent a text to the Raos the day after the Halloween party. Something about underage drinking and driving. A harbinger of the calamity that lay ahead.

At a recent pretrial hearing, prosecutor Thomas Williams likened the Raos to negligent referees.

“Imagine a basketball game where one player fouls another,” he said. “A hard foul. And the referee sees the foul, but doesn’t do anything about it. That trains the basketball player, ‘Oh, the referee is gonna have a loose whistle. He’s not gonna blow his whistle. I can get away with just a little bit more.’ And the next foul’s a little bit harder. And the next foul after that is a little bit harder. But no whistles ever come.”

Hannah and her friends learned from this pattern of experiences, Williams said: It trained them to believe they could get away with drinking and driving.

***

On a Friday morning at a law office in Buckhead, at a long wooden table in a conference room, Lynsey Barron was talking with a reporter about the proper management of teenagers. Barron is a former federal prosecutor, current defense attorney for Sumanth and Anindita Rao, and the mother of a Lakeside baseball player who has the Life360 app on his phone so she can monitor his speed. Barron wondered what she was supposed to do when her son’s friends came over.

“Do I need to search their bags?” she asked. “Do I need to pat them down? Do I need to breathalyse them before they leave? What are my obligations that will keep the district attorney out of my case?”

This was a crucial part of the indictment against the Raos: They allegedly let the girls leave the house and drive after drinking. But while Ananya was 17, their daughter and a minor, Hannah and Sophie were 18. Too young to legally drink, but technically adults.

“Like, what — is Sumanth supposed to just blockade them, prevent them from leaving, take their keys?” Barron asked. “ … I’m not sure I agree that the law even allows them to do that. You cannot take the property of an adult.”

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Barron had joined a defense team led by Manny Arora, a military veteran and former Fulton County prosecutor who had a conspicuous manner of pronoun usage when he talked about his clients. Instead of saying “he” or “she” or “they,” he sometimes said “we” and “us.” As if his own fate, his own guilt and innocence, were bound up with theirs.

Arora argued that the Raos had been unfairly singled out for the parties they hosted. In a motion to dismiss the disorderly-house charge, he provided a list of 39 other houses in or near Oak Grove where similar parties took place. He had pictures and videos.

“This evidence depicts a wild and pervasive party culture (to even include a fight club in a student’s basement) among the student body at Lakeside High School that is straight out of Animal House, ATL, or House Party,” he wrote. “These numerous other parties in the Lakeside School District have seemingly unlimited alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, magic mushrooms, and violent organized boxing matches.”

“All of the parties occurred at residential addresses just like the Raos’ home; however, none of the adults who own the homes have ever been prosecuted.”

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

It was time for show and tell in the conference room at the Arora law firm. Attorney Robert Wilson led a tour through social-media posts they’d found. The images were projected onto a TV screen on the wall.

“So most of this is just other Lakeside parties,” Wilson said.

“I mean, it’s like pretty clear they’re in somebody’s kitchen and they’re drinking. The parents are home. I mean, there’s no way they wouldn’t know this is happening in their kitchen.”

These parties happened at other people’s houses. Images selected as exhibits for a court hearing included a barefoot youth sprawled face-down on a beige carpet, surrounded by the white sneakers of various companions. Another partygoer apparently passed out in a bush. A young man holding a white can of Miller Lite and wearing a camouflage-print bandolier that appeared to contain beer cans instead of bullets. Someone holding a girl’s hair, apparently so she could vomit into a fern.

“This is Sophie and Hannah joking about driving drunk,” Wilson said.

In the video, they were lounging on a couch in Hannah’s basement. Hannah passed Sophie a small bottle of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, which Sophie held for a moment between her teeth.

“I’ve driven more drunk than this,” Hannah said.

“Obviously, I’m not good to be driving right now,” Sophie said. “Absolutely not. But guess who’s gonna do it anyways?”

The video clip ended. Wilson sighed.

“See,” he said, “I don’t think the Raos were the source of the drinking and driving.”

There was another video of Sophie and Hannah. Sophie posted it on TikTok about 10 months before the crash. She was riding in a moving vehicle, daytime scenery flashing through the windows behind her, and singing along to a remix of “505” by the Arctic Monkeys. The video had an astonishing caption:

hannahs drivings gonna kill me one day

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

***

It was Good Friday afternoon at the courthouse in Decatur, and Ananya Rao had sworn to tell the truth. Now, at a pretrial motions hearing, she disclosed something about one of the friends she had lost. Sophie and her parents hosted a party that seemed to resemble the parties for which the Rao parents had been criminally charged. Ananya said about 50 guests attended.

“Were Sophie’s parents in places at that house where there was underage drinking in front of them?” Barron asked.

“Yes,” Ananya said.

“Did you personally drink alcohol in front of Sophie’s dad, Mr. Lekiachvili?”

“Yes.”

Barron marched on.

“Did students drive themselves to this party?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ananya said.

“And after the party was over,” she asked, “did students leave in their cars?”

“Yes,” Ananya said.

The AJC reached out to Sophie’s parents for this story. Her father, Akaki Lekiachvili, did not respond to an emailed list of questions, including some about the party Ananya described in court. But since Sophie’s death, he has worked to keep other young people safe. Through a nonprofit organization called Drive Smart, Lekiachvili helped bring a defensive-driving course to nearly 100 Lakeside students last year. In a 2024 opinion piece for the AJC, Akaki and Karolina Lekiachvili made it clear they supported the prosecutions related to Sophie’s death.

“Individuals who criminally contributed to the accident had to be held accountable to prevent similar tragedies,” they wrote.

Credit: Courtesy photo

Credit: Courtesy photo

Under oath, Ananya named other friends who had hosted parties with underage drinking. She said she’d attended at least 30 to 40 large parties and more than 100 smaller gatherings. The police showed up at some of these gatherings. After one, she said, a Lakeside student was arrested and charged with DUI. But no other parents were arrested.

On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Reid White confronted Ananya with a moment from the night Sophie died.

“Do you remember an incident where you were baking a pie, Sophia Lekiachvili and Hannah Hackemeyer were in your kitchen, Hannah Hackemeyer was holding a glass of wine and dancing, and your father was watching this happen and dancing along with them? Do you remember an incident like that occurring?”

“Yes,” she said.

White questioned Ananya about other parts of her testimony.

“You indicated you attended lots of different other parties at other people’s houses,” he said. “Um, anyone die at those parties?”

“No,” she said.

“Anyone die as a result of those parties?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

Ananya stepped down, and Arora kept trying to convince the judge that this prosecution was unfair. Once again, he spoke in the voice of his clients.

“These kids drink and they drive,” he said. “We didn’t start this.”

“Nothing happens to anybody else. Why are we reckless?”

Superior Court Judge Tangela Barrie took it all in. She reserved judgment on the motion to dismiss but made it clear she was inclined to rule against the Raos. If their attorneys had convinced her of something, it was this: The Lakeside district had a serious underage-drinking problem. She said she was “baffled” by the apparent fact that “the parents in this community are OK with it.”

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

But none of those other parents were on trial before her.

Arora kept trying things, pressing one finer point of the law or another, running up against certain universal precepts that stood outside the jurisdiction of the superior court. No matter what this judge did or said, some reckless conduct would go unpunished. Some people would drive drunk without getting caught. Some would speed without crashing. Some would suffer immediate and dramatic consequences for their actions, and others would not. Life was both unfair and unpredictable, and some hardships were even worse than going to prison. You never knew what would happen when you let your child out of your sight. Never imagined that when she said, “I’ll be leaving soon,” she would soon be gone forever.

***

In February, about two years after the crash, Hannah pleaded guilty to a reckless-driving charge, an open-container charge, serious injury by vehicle, and first-degree vehicular homicide. Despite what the district attorney said at the news conference, Hannah avoided prison altogether. She was sentenced to two years’ house arrest and eight years of probation.

How did 30 potential years in prison go to zero? The available court documents don’t answer that question. Some records from her case have been sealed under the Georgia First Offender Act.

Hannah is listed in a court document as a witness in the Rao case. Defense attorneys said they expect her to testify. In a list of questions sent to Hannah’s attorney, the AJC asked if she’d made a deal to testify against the Raos in exchange for a lighter sentence. The attorney did not answer the question. The AJC asked this same question of Claire Simms Chaffins, communications director for the DA’s office. “Well,” Chaffins said, “we can’t talk about plea negotiations.”

If Hannah does testify against the Raos, who could go to trial as soon as late summer, this would be a relevant fact in the allocation of blame for Sophie’s death. It would mean Hannah helping the state place the blame elsewhere. The Raos face up to 10 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. They could be punished more severely than the person who drove the vehicle.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

There was something else that bothered Arora and Barron. They complained that the DA’s office had never treated Ananya like the victim she was in Hannah’s case. This was no small thing. For some crimes, including serious injury by vehicle, Georgia law includes a bill of rights for victims. They include the right to be notified of hearings and the right to speak at the plea or sentencing of the accused.

Responding to the claim, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Williams said the DA’s office sent “no less than four letters to Ananya Rao” at her parents’ home address, where Ananya still receives mail. His filing said the last letter was dated Dec. 29, 2025, and gave Ananya notice of Hannah’s upcoming guilty plea.

But in a subsequent court document, Ananya stated that she never received any of those letters. And the Raos’ attorneys noticed something strange about the last one that Williams included as an exhibit. A letter dated in 2025 contained a 2026 case number. Hannah was re-indicted under a new case number early in 2026, and the 2025 letter seemed to contain specific knowledge of something that had yet to happen.

Under the Georgia Open Records Act, the AJC asked the DA’s office for metadata from the letters that could show the actual dates they were created. In response, the DA’s office provided metadata showing that some of the letters had been created in 2025. As for the letter dated December 2025, the metadata showed it had actually been created in March 2026.

Chaffins gave an explanation relating to a Microsoft Word template and letters generated by the case-management system. But three days after the DA’s office made this disclosure, Williams filed a new court document asking the judge to disregard the exhibit letters and the arguments upon which they were based. “The undersigned now believes those exhibits do not accurately reflect that the State sent every required victim notification to Ananya Rao,” he wrote. The DA’s office filed another document saying it had not given Ananya advance notice of Hannah’s plea. The state would not object if Ananya filed a petition to be heard by the judge.

Arora said it was too late.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” he said. “I mean, the sentence is in, and that’s that.”

This fact remained: When Hannah pleaded guilty in exchange for no prison time, Ananya’s voice was not heard.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Here are a few things she told a reporter about that night.

For anyone who might want to spread the blame further, to take those 100 percentage points and share them among a wider range of people, Ananya’s story offers some useful evidence. Especially regarding the bottle of wine.

According to Ananya, there were actually three bottles of wine. She said Hannah smuggled them into the house when she brought in one or more bags for the sleepover.

“She had like clothes on top of them and stuff,” Ananya said. “They were hidden.”

And how did Hannah get the wine? Ananya said Hannah acquired it the day before, on a trip to a liquor store with a different friend, “and her friend had a fake ID and they got the wine.”

Ananya named this other friend. The AJC reached out to her seeking an interview but did not get a reply. The AJC also asked Hannah’s attorney about the friend and the fake ID but did not get an answer. Wilson, one of the Raos’ attorneys, told the AJC there was record of a Zelle transaction wherein Hannah paid the friend for the wine.

Late on Friday night, after they’d had some wine and eaten a pizza and finished with the apple pie, and after a fourth friend left because she had a test in the morning, Ananya and Sophie and Hannah made a consequential decision together.

“I don’t really remember what, like, the conversation was, but I guess we decided we were bored and wanted to go on a drive,” Ananya said. “And like, Hannah was like, my best friend. I’d seen her drunk a bunch of times. I could tell that she was not drunk. And so I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’”

Hannah liked driving, Ananya said. So they let her drive. It had been a warm day for February, and near midnight in Atlanta the sky was clear and the temperature was still in the fifties. According to Ananya, they went to the QuikTrip at Clairmont and Briarcliff and got a Coke for Sophie. Then Hannah drove the blue Mazda east on Briarcliff Road. The road narrowed, going up a hill. The Mazda went past Chrysler Drive, not far from Street De Ville, passing old trees with English ivy climbing their trunks. Ananya was in the back seat. Sophie rode in the front. They passed the Atlanta White House, a mansion with Greek Revival columns that looks a lot like the real White House. Hannah approached the high school and took a hard right on Oak Grove Road.

There was one last conversation among the Mazda’s three inhabitants. According to Ananya, the substance of it was this: Hannah said she was going to try the Oak Grove 100. She’d done it before in a different vehicle, but not in the Mazda. Neither passenger supported this decision, Ananya said, but Hannah had made up her mind. Ananya told Hannah to slow down before the curve.

And so the blue Mazda tore through the night, carrying Sophie toward the death she had foretold. The Oak Grove 100. Where to place the blame? If you had 100 percentage points, who would get some, and how many each? There are so many possibilities. You could give some to the Raos, as the district attorney did, but you would not have to stop there. You could give some to Ananya and some to Sophie, for drinking with Hannah and then getting in a vehicle with her. But maybe you’d still have some points to give. There was the friend who bought the wine, the person who made the fake ID, the clerk who may or may not have looked at the forgery before ringing up the sale. There was the first person to try the Oak Grove 100, and everyone else who kept up a tradition that proved to be homicidal.

If someone did train Hannah to drink and drive, as a prosecutor told the judge, was it more than one person?

A friend?

A high school?

A neighborhood?

You could turn back the clock, zoom out across space. You could divide the points into fractions and build a chain of causation that stretches deep into the past. Or you could go another way.

A dark night, a two-lane road. The pines and the hardwoods. The long straightaway near Cadillac Drive. Hannah drives faster and faster. Yes, her veins contain alcohol that no one stopped her from drinking. Yes, others in this neighborhood have set a bad example for her to follow. Yes, every life includes some unique and untold combination of experiences for which other people are morally culpable. But she is 18 years old, an adult woman in a free country, and her foot is on the accelerator. Here comes that curve.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

What killed Sophie, a reporter asked Ananya two years later.

“Hannah’s driving,” she said.

It was crystal-clear in your mind?

“Yes,” she said. “Hundred percent. It was never anything except for Hannah.”

But there was yet another way to look at the crash, and it had nothing to do with blame. This other perspective came from Holly Brass, a Lakeside mother who knew both the Raos and the Hackemeyers. She remembered Hannah’s mother from cheerleading at Henderson Middle School, remembered her faithfully showing up, giving water and oranges and rides. Brass saw Anindita Rao after the crash, the pain in her eyes, the distance Mrs. Rao felt from so many people in the community. Brass thought of the three girls in the Mazda that night, and she thought of her own children, and how easily one of them could have been involved in the crash. As the driver. As the badly injured survivor. Or as the one who was killed.

Brass reached out to some friends to let them know the Raos needed help. Needed people to show up in court on their behalf. Quite a few supporters did show up. But one of her friends gave a firm and definitive no.

And Brass told the friend something that could apply to any number of parents, anywhere in America. Anywhere children grow up and leave the house and begin to make their own choices. Anywhere some of those choices turn out to be catastrophic mistakes.

She said,

“This could be you.”

— AJC videographer Jordan Pettiford and Jennifer Peebles and Charles Minshew from the data team contributed to this report.