Popular Battery Creek junior killed while crossing highway

BEAUFORT -- A Battery Creek High School student was killed Thursday morning when he was struck by a cement truck while crossing S.C. 170 near the Broad River bridge, police said.

Zacharias Langan, 15, of Beaufort was standing in the median near Lee Distributors when he stepped in front of the truck, which was traveling south toward the bridge at about 7:30 a.m., according to authorities. The truck swerved, trying to miss him, Port Royal police Sgt. Michael Chapman said.

"It's just a tragic thing that happened here," he said. Police did not release the driver's name and said the accident is still being investigated.

Police believe Zacharias -- known to friends and family as Zach -- was likely on his way to school because he was wearing a book bag when he was hit, he said. However, John Williams, a district spokesman, said a school bus would not have picked him up there.

Police are unsure why Zacharias stepped in front of the truck, but his mother, Chris Langan, 45, said he was an epileptic and suffered two seizures this week. She said she doesn't know why he was on the highway, but thinks he might have had another seizure that left him disoriented just before he was hit.

"Zach made being a single parent an easy job," she said at their home in the Chesterfield neighborhood off Broad River Boulevard. He also has a 25-year-old sister, Theresa. "God has his angel. He's got one more," she said, struggling to hold back tears. "I thank God for the 15 years I was blessed to have him with me."

At 15, Zacharias was young for a junior and known as an exceptionally intelligent student at Battery Creek. He earned a full scholarship worth more than $40,000 to Maryland's West Nottingham Academy, the nation's oldest boarding school, his mother said. He was registered to start there in September.

He had aspirations to attend Harvard University.

"I think he would have gotten a full ride," his mother said. Zacharias joined Battery Creek last year after his mother retired from the Navy and the family left Naples, Italy, where she was stationed. He made the boy's tennis team this year, having never played tennis seriously before, and was a member of the Interact Club, a service-oriented, student branch of

Rotary International.

"He may have been the most brilliant student I've taught," said John Fisher, his teacher and tennis coach. "I don't want to diminish his life to just (academic) grades, but he really was that special. He was the kind of kid you just knew was going to do big things."

The student body was told of his death during second period over the school intercom, principal Ed Burnes said. First, Burnes said a student had been killed Thursday

morning.

"Then they said 11th-grader, and I was like, 'I probably know this person,' " junior Teal Butler said.

Then, his name: Zacharias Langan.

"(We) were shocked, and couldn't believe it," Teal said.

A team of 10 Beaufort County School District counselors and psychologists were brought to Battery Creek from other schoolseal with bereaved students, Williams said. About 30 to 40 students met with the counselors, Burnes said, and about a dozen were given permission to leave school early.

Later in the afternoon, through an arrangement with the district, outside mental health officials counseled teachers dealing with the loss.

Bulter and another friend, junior Ashley Williams, remembered Zacharias as happy and humorous, a teenager prone to the occasional histrionic outburst.

He dressed up as a king for Halloween and carried a fake sword, said Butler, who got to know Zacharias this year through a friend.

"He would totally get into character with who he was," she said. "He was just a really fun guy to be around. He could make you smile and stuff."

Williams, his neighbor, spent the weekend with Zacharias at a conference associated with the Interact Club in Clinton. She said she remembered little moments, little things. How he often rolled around Chesterfield on his skateboard. And the time she gave him a ride home on her bike as he sat on the handlebars.

"We always joked about that," she said.

Gazette writer Dan Hilliard contributed to this report.