Friday, February 19, 1988.  When the day started, there hadn't been an auto fatality in Washington in over eight years.

Stacey's evening that night began like many other teenagers' evenings in Washington.  She got together with a friend and headed up to the Valley Forge Cinema to watch a movie —this time, "Three Men & A Baby."  When the movie was over, the two walked to one of the nearby fast-food restaurants.

Hammer and her friend met up with 16-year-old Brian Weaver, who offered to give them a ride home in his 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit.  Weaver had just received his driver's license the day before, and this was the first time he had taken out the family car.

By the time the group headed off, there were seven people in the front-wheel-drive Rabbit: five in the back seat and two in the front, including Weaver, Hammer, Fred and Kenneth Crosiar, Lori Hramec, Holly Bender, and Belayne Garrison.

The crowded car ended up on Cruger Road heading east when it navigated the curve just west of Nofsinger Road.  As it did, the car spun sideways into the westbound lane, directly in the path of an oncoming 1985 Ford Thunderbird driven by Rhonda Fries, which T-boned the Rabbit in the 45 MPH zone.  There was no indication that either car was speeding, and no skid marks were found at the scene.  It was a violent, tragic collision, with four of the seven passengers of the Rabbit being thrown from the vehicle at impact.

Stacey Hammer was seated in the back corner of the Rabbit where the collision occurred and died at the scene.  The other six passengers of the vehicle and Fries were all hospitalized for varying degrees of injury, and all of them survived.  Hammer's death was later ruled accidental.

Washington mourned the loss of a resident, but more so the loss of one of its youth.