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Jeffrey Szatkowski, 17, of Spotswood, and Nicole Surace, 18, of Milltown, died after they were involved in a single-car crash on Dutch Road in East Brunswick Saturday night.

(Courtesy of Facebook)

By Tom Wright-Piersanti and Eunice Lee/ Star-Ledger Staff

EAST BRUNSWICK — The high school sweethearts were a seemingly picture-perfect pair.

He was a football and baseball player at Spotswood High and she was a cheerleader. In a prom photo taken in May and posted on Facebook, Nicole Surace and boyfriend Jeffrey Szatkowski flashed megawatt smiles while sporting carefully coordinated formal wear in Spotswood Chargers blue.

At 7:50 p.m. Saturday, Szatkowski, 17, of Spotswood, was driving a 2004 Ford Mustang with Surace, 18, of Milltown, as his passenger on Dutch Road in East Brunswick when the car ran off the road, slammed into a telephone pole, flipped, struck a tree and landed on its roof, East Brunswick Police Lt. Kevin Zebro said.

Both Szatkowski and Surace died from their injuries later at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, Zebro said. An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing, police said.

Word of the accident spread quickly in the two Middlesex County towns. The teens crashed while heading south on the narrow forest-lined Dutch Road, a favorite route for students traveling between Milltown and Spotswood — towns that share a high school.

Szatkowski was currently a senior at Spotswood High and Surace was a freshman at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.

According to Surace’s Twitter feed, she was spending the Thanksgiving holiday with family.

The deaths of the teen couple, who according to their Facebook pages have been in a relationship since last year, stunned Kenny Wisniewski, Surace’s cheerleading coach.

Two people set up a roadside memorial on Dutch Road in East Brunswick, where the couple crashed Saturday night and later died.

“It’s way too early — there’s no way she should have been gone that soon,” said Wisniewski, head tumbling instructor at World Cup Allstar Cheerleading in Freehold.

He said he has known Surace for 10 years through cheerleading and coached her on the club's co-ed Odyssey team for two years before she graduated high school.

“She was the motivation — she was one of those kids that no matter what, she kept everybody going. She was one of the most outgoing personalities on the team,” Wisniewski, a resident of Middlesex, said.

Earlier Saturday, Wisniewski said he read about actor Paul Walker’s death in a car crash in California and learned of the crash when he noticed on Facebook a friend of Surace’s family was asking for prayers for the 18-year-old. Around 2:30 a.m., Wisniewski said he learned Surace had died.

When Surace wasn’t traveling with her team to cheering competitions around the U.S. or attending two-hour practices three times a week, she was cheering for Szatkowski and the rest of the football team. A Facebook photo shows the pair in high school, Surace embracing Szatkowski who sports his No. 7 football jersey.

A defensive back starter for the past two years, Szatkowski began freshman year on the team as a kicker, head football coach Andy Cammarano said.

“He really had a ton of courage. I know I had something special with him when he hopped in there and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll kick’,” Cammarano said.

Szatkowski, he recalled, was quick with a joke and could ease his teammates' nerves before they hit the field.

“We were never uptight before games because of Jeff,” said Cammarano, who noted the team’s 7-3 record. “We had our best season in 11 years and Jeff was a huge part of that,” he added.

Friends and classmates of the victims flooded social media, expressing shock and grief. Photos tweeted and posted on Facebook show the pair dressed for the prom, kissing and with friends.

At the crash scene this evening, a young man and woman arrived with two wooden crosses, flowers and a teddy bear. They pounded the crosses into the ground, laid the flowers down and said silent prayers before heading back to their car. Within minutes, more young people arrived, some with their parents, all silently praying.



A telephone pole split in two — one part in the ground, the other suspended from overhead wires — also remained just yards from a set of tire tracks on Dutch Road near Fresh Ponds Road.

Saul Marcial, 18, of Milltown, said he met Surace when they were both high school freshman.

She was the type of friend who was ready to lend a hand — whether it was help with math homework or asking his date to prom, Marcial said.

“She was a great person. She was always there to help me,” said Marcial, who graduated last spring with Surace. A soccer player at Spotswood High and now at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa., Marcial said he plans switch his No. 17 jersey to No. 7 in honor of Szatkowski.

Superintendent Scott Rocco of the Spotswood School District released this statement yesterday: “The Spotswood Public School community is saddened by the news of a car accident that claimed the lives of a senior and a graduate. Our condolences go out to the families. Counseling services and resources will be available tomorrow throughout the day for our students and staff at Spotswood High School.”

Theresa Messina, who goes by the Twitter handle ‏@tlmessina, echoed similar sentiments: "Rest in peace to two beautiful, loving people. No one deserves this, but now they're safe and sound. Rest easy Nicole and Jeff."

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