Now just as in 2008, so much coverage of crime and personal tragedy is quick, sensational, and uncompassionate. It’s uncommon news readers hear from survivors in any depth — and not outside of a tragedy’s immediate aftermath — unless a reporter takes special care.

Sean D. Hamill’s Pittsburgh City Paper feature “Long Road Back” is that rare exception (which I admit haunted me long before highlighting it for this column). In this deeply felt and extensively reported 5,000-word story, Hamill, a Sewickley native, revisits a harrowing 1971 drunk driving accident in his hometown in which the car caught fire and killed four teenage boys. The accident began a “long period of collective grief,” Hamill writes, created urban legends, led to a lawsuit and redesign of the Chrysler station wagon, and added to growing drunk driving awareness that spurred advocacy groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (founded in 1980).

But it’s the personal connection that makes this story. Hamill speaks not only with the accident’s survivors — at the time, men in their 50s, including one who became a burn unit nurse — and surviving families, but seeks out the convicted drunk driver, then sober, giving some long overdue solace.

Read the full story, originally printed on Dec. 17, 2008, below: