More News

When the band Danger sends out a rendition of the classic "Sweet Child o' Mine" at the Community Cupcakes Battle of the Bands on Saturday, it's going to be way more than a tribute to Guns N' Roses.

The song will also be a poignant reminder to Danger guitarist Matthew Morgan that the fate of Luke Carter-Schelp, a Garrett Park boy killed in an auto-pedestrian accident in 2006, could have been his own.

The battle of the bands will feature 11 garage bands in a celebration of what would have been Carter-Schelp's 15th birthday. The event will raise money for the charity Hungry for Music, which provides instruments to low-income kids, and will be held at Walter Johnson High School, where Carter-Schelp would have been a freshman.

Morgan, 14, just passed the third anniversary of his own auto-pedestrian accident, which left him in a 13-day coma in 2006 after he skateboarded into a moving vehicle in Potomac. The event hospitalized him for 37 days and his mother Karen said it's a miracle he lived.

"We signed the organ donation papers and we were told he would not survive," Karen Morgan said. "You don't know why one child survives and the other does not."

While he was still in the hospital, friends of Matthew's family would call the local radio station and dedicate "Sweet Child o' Mine" to him, which is why the band chose the song to play for the memory of Luke and his mother, Val Carter.

"I can understand how his family is feeling, and I'm honored to be playing for them," Matthew said.

Carter said learning about Morgan's accident has "definitely been bittersweet."

"Luke was 11 that same day," Carter said of the Feb. 9, 2006 date of Morgan's accident. "He was still 11." His Feb. 28, 2006 birthday would be the last he celebrated before his accident Nov. 13 the same year.

Carter said Karen Morgan has been dedicated to Community Cupcakes, the charity organization Carter founded in Luke's honor, since she learned of it, and the whole event has "a lot of good energy about it."

"It's been a good way to think of Luke's birthday, I can't wait to see Matthew play," Carter said. "I'm just so amazed that there's going to be a boy playing in a band and was hit by a car and was saved."

Karen Morgan, who helped found another charity, For Our Children and Theirs, after Matthew's accident, said her family is just honored to participate in the event.

"Anything we can do to celebrate Luke's birthday and his memory is something we want to participate in," Morgan said. "It'll be a very emotional evening because I could be in those shoes."

Even kids who don't have close ties to Luke's story have banded together to set up the event. Nico Atencio's Leadership class at Walter Johnson has been helping to arrange everything from the advertising to the sound system as a class project, a process through which Carter said she has "been so impressed with the maturity of these kids."

And rockers from other bands are aware of the boy behind the battle.

Michael Garate, 16, of Kensington, the keyboardist for the band Power Pirate, was invited by Carter when she saw electronic rockers playing a street event in Bethesda. Garate said he never knew Carter-Schelp, but knew about him.

"I think it's a great idea, even in general to provide an event with free cupcakes and kids getting to have fun and I think if that's something [Luke] would have liked, that's even better."

Community Cupcakes volunteers will be selling pizza and commemorative T-shirts to raise money for Hungry for Music, as well as collecting used instruments for the charity. Pizza sales will begin at 6 p.m., doors will open at 6:30 and bands go on at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Walter Johnson High School, 6400 Rock Spring Drive, Bethesda. Tickets are $5.