Friends and loved ones gather yesterday at the site of a fatal accident on New Meadow Road in Barrington, which claimed the life of Jon Converse, 17. Providence Journal photo / Bob Thayer

BARRINGTON — A small group of teenagers in coats and hooded sweatshirts huddled in the rain-soaked woods just off New Meadow Road yesterday morning, standing around a tree with damaged bark and a bouquet of yellow flowers wedged between its branches.

Sad and angry, the students didn’t want to talk about their classmate, Barrington High School junior Jon Converse, who died at this spot the night before in a serious car crash.

“All you need to know,” one boy said hostilely, “is he was always smiling, every time you saw him.”

News that another teenager had died in what the police allege was an alcohol-related car accident has left Barrington once again grappling with the problem of underage drinking. Less than four months ago, a Barrington student was killed in what is alleged to be an alcohol-related boating accident.

“It’s hard to imagine how tragedy can be concentrated in one community over such a short extension of time,” School Committee Chairman Patrick “Buzz” Guida said yesterday. “We have been so proactive in trying to identify a way of communicating the dangers of this behavior, and now this happens.”

Converse, 17, of 2 Old River Rd., was riding in the front seat of a car carrying three other Barrington teenage boys at about 10:50 p.m., when the 16-year-old driver — whom the police said was driving “at a high rate of speed” in a 25–mph zone — lost control of the car, crossed the center line into the northbound lane of the winding, narrow road and struck a tree.

Converse was thrown partially out of a passenger-side window and was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. He was not wearing a seat belt. The two back-seat passengers, 16 and 17 years old, suffered minor injuries.

The driver was taken to Rhode Island Hospital with minor injuries. The police said they were charging him with drunken driving, death resulting, and refusing to submit to a chemical breath test.

The police issued a brief statement reporting that the four underage boys had been drinking before the accident. The statement did not identify the car’s occupants, although their names were easily obtainable throughout the town.

Yesterday afternoon, Dan Converse, the father of the dead teenager, appeared shaken and declined to comment after a visit to his home by Barrington High School Principal John R. Gray and a guidance counselor.

“The family is devastated … only someone who has experienced the loss of a child can know what this means,” Gray said outside the Converse house. Jon, he said, was “just a real delightful individual.”

In an interview earlier yesterday, Dan Converse called his son’s death “another needless tragedy.”

“I really can’t embellish or elaborate at this point. And I don’t want to get on a soapbox,” Converse told EastBayRI.com.

The mood in Barrington is marked by “sorrow for the families and puzzlement as to what to do next,” said Barrington Town Councilwoman June Speakman, who has a child at the high school.

Speakman said Police Chief John M. LaCross has worked particularly hard to sensitize teens to the dangers of drinking. “He’s stunned,” Speakman said of the chief, who was unavailable for comment all day.

Kathleen Sullivan, coordinator of the town’s substance abuse task force, said 25 people, a higher than usual turnout, attended the group’s monthly meeting earlier this week. “But then you come home and find out the next day that you’ve lost another youth,” she said. “It’s sad, painfully sad.”

Sullivan said the community is feeling frustrated and “a little bit of anger because they’re asking, ‘What is it going to take for these kids and their parents to learn?’ ”

On Facebook, a popular, social networking Web site, friends began posting words of sympathy yesterday, including “RIP Converse we love you man,” “hey buddy, i am going to miss you. RIP bro” and “I hate this — — what the — i love you buddy you just chill with [Patrick] murphy till im up there too.”

Seventeen-year-old Patrick Murphy died July 17 while kneeboarding on the Barrington River. His classmate, Ryan A. Greenberg, also 17, has pleaded not guilty to charges of reckless boating, death resulting; refusing to take a breath test; and underage possession of alcohol.

Just nine hours after Murphy’s funeral, Barrington police broke up a house party and arrested four people on charges of underage drinking.

In the wake of Murphy’s death, a local pastor criticized the town for failing to confront its youth-partying culture.

“Don’t deny that we have a problem,” the Rev. S. Matthew Glover, of St. Luke’s Roman Catholic parish, advised in his July 22 homily. “You want to know what’s going on in our town? I’ll tell you. Kids are depressed. Kids are filled with anxiety. Kids are lonely. Kids are bored. Kids [are affected by] broken relationships and promises — those of their parents, tragically, and those of their own. They suffer from addiction, to drinking and to drugs. They suffer character flaws like you and I both do. It’s not [unique] to our town. They suffer, and that’s what we first must realize.”

At about the same time, Barrington High School student Bianca Jones-Pearson posted a message on the Internet urging her peers to stop drinking. Her words apparently inflamed some of her classmates, who, the family says, have harassed them ever since, throwing beer bottles and eggs at the family’s house and tossing a rock through Bianca’s mother’s pottery studio.

Murphy’s death followed the 2005 deaths of students Zachary Stiness and Michael Neubauer, who were killed in a one-car accident on Nayatt Road after they had attended two house parties where alcohol was available.

Although police reported that they could find no correlation between the high-speed accident and the parties, the double fatality prompted a community-wide effort to stop underage drinking. Chief LaCross ordered beefed-up police patrols on weekends and at teen hangouts. He also waged a campaign to get a new social host law passed that would make it easier to punish adults who allow underage drinking in their homes.

Four months ago, the police responded to the Stiness’ address, where they found dozens of youths, plus beer bottles and a small keg. Three 18-year-old women were charged with alcohol possession. The police did not bring charges against either Kelley Stiness, Zachary’s mother, or her adult son, because of a loophole in the new social host law that only allows for charges against adults who permit underage drinking inside their residence, the police said. The July party was held outside.

Since the death of Patrick Murphy, LaCross has helped organize a visit to the high school by a former professional football player, who lectured student-athletes on the dangers of underage drinking. Attendance by athletes and their parents at the September assembly was mandatory.

Last month, Brendan Lombardi, formerly of Barrington, spoke to Barrington seniors about what he’s faced since crashing his car in 2003 into a tree in Bristol after a night of drinking and cocaine use. The accident killed two of Lombardi’s passengers and seriously injured a third, and resulted in Lombardi being sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In an interview last month, LaCross said, “I think the culture [in Barrington] is pretty ingrained with underage drinking …. It’s about getting kids not to want to drink and it’s about getting parents to understand it’s not acceptable for their children to drink until they’re 21. I think what has to happen here and all over the state is the parents have to realize there are negative consequences to underage drinking.”

He added: “I hope there will be a change in the attitude of the youth of this town and they will learn from past incidents. I’m going to be optimistic. I have to be. If I wasn’t, I would feel defeated.”

The Barrington School Committee recently tightened its penalties for students who are caught drinking or using illegal drugs. Those found in violation won’t be able to participate in sports or activities for 10 days, or attend games and events for an additional 5 days.

Guida, who lives near the site of Monday’s accident, said he’s trying to process the death of another teen. He said he heard from a number of residents who are grappling, like him, with the frustration they feel after yet another tragedy.

“I continue to struggle with how we can be better educators, administrators, parents and School Committee to try to ingrain this message of the risk and the danger of this behavior,” Guida said. “It’s frightfully frustrating.”

“The Town of Barrington, including the municipal government and the School Department, has done everything within its power to educate the parents and children of Barrington and to encourage them to make good choices,” Town Council President Jeffrey S. Brenner said. “We’ll continue to do what we can to prevent tragedies like this from occurring in the future.”

There was no school yesterday because of a professional development day for teachers.

Principal Gray said guidance counselors were available yesterday, and would be again today, for students and their families. He said he informed his faculty of the accident first thing yesterday morning and planned to meet with them again yesterday afternoon to “strategize how to deal with the aftermath when the kids arrive” at school this morning.

With reports from Journal staff writer C. Eugene Emery and projo.com staff writer Michael McKinney.

mwims@projo.com