AUBURN – After watching a hearse haul away a classmate – pretending to be a fatality from a drunk driver’s crash – threats of prison were too much for Edward Little High School’s Michael Heikkinen.

The junior busted out with laughter when District Attorney Norm Croteau warned the school’s juniors and seniors that drunkenly killing somebody with a car would send them to the Maine Correctional Center.

“I don’t really see myself doing any of these things,” Heikkinen said. The catastrophic consequences of drinking and driving have been hammered home for years, he said. “Also, I laugh when I get nervous.”

The morning-long exercise was meant to make students uncomfortable.

It began with a mock crash in the school parking lot, complete with cop cars, an ambulance, a firetruck and a hearse.

While juniors and seniors watched, police cuffed and carted away a supposedly drunk driver. Then they watched as a figure beneath a white sheet was hauled out in a hearse.

“Kids have seen this before on TV,” Assistant Principal Steve Galway said. “But this is their backyard.”

The event has been done every two years at the high school for the last decade or so, said counselor Dan Campbell, who began the program.

It is usually timed to coincide with end-of-school events. The school’s prom is scheduled for Saturday night.

Galway hopes the teens have fun, but he wants to keep the drama away, he said.

As part of Tuesday’s event, he read the juniors and seniors a poem describing the death of a student who was hit by a drunk driver.

As he read, he began to cry.

“I was thinking of students I have known who lost their lives in car accidents,” Galway said later. He thought of a school staffer who lost family in the tragic 2006 Christmas Eve crash that killed six people in Poland.

The crash was also on Croteau’s mind as he addressed the teens.

He described being called to the scene that Sunday morning. On the way, he tried to reach his son by phone.

“What am I thinking?” Croteau asked. “I hope it’s not my kid.” Moments before the district attorney reached the scene, his son picked up the phone safe at home.

These crashes don’t happen to bad kids, he said.

“It’s all about unintended consequences,” he said. “You may choose to drink. You may choose to drive. No one ever chooses to die.”

Heikkinen listened. And when he laughed, he wasn’t alone. Others passed notes or snickered.

Galway heard them, but it didn’t bother him.

“You’ve got to deliver the message,” the assistant principal said. “Some kids don’t handle it well.”

Some laugh on the outside, but they’re listening, too, he said.