Friday, March 24, 2006

This shouldn't be the least bit funny, yet…

This is a piece of news which I only heard about through The Plural Of Apocalypse list of the "New of the Apocalyptic sort," which she does periodically.

Onto the news (insert old-timey clickity clack of newswires here):

Miss Deaf Texas was text messaging parents before accident

AUSTIN (AP) — Miss Deaf Texas was walking just a foot away from the train tracks on her way to her mother’s workplace when she was struck and killed by a passing Union Pacific train.

While she was walking, Tara McAvoy, 18, was text messaging on her cell phone last week to her parents, who are also hearing impaired. Police said McAvoy was likely distracted before she was hit by the snowplow on the front of a 65-car Union Pacific train. She died at the scene.

“As the train approached, they sounded the horn and got no response,” Austin police Detective David Fugitt said. “They activated the emergency brakes but were unable to stop in time.”

A railroad spokesman said that the accident underscores the danger of walking anywhere near railroad tracks.

“It’s not safe to be there,” said Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis.

McAvoy graduated from the Texas School for the Deaf in 2005 and won the state pageant in June. She was scheduled to compete in the national pageant in California this year. She had been a cheerleader, a basketball player and an honor roll student at the school.

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News from: CantonRep.com

7 comments:

Still Searching... said...

Omigosh, how awful! I have a thing about railroad tracks. Trains freak me out. Don't ask, I dunno...just one of those things I guess.

Knina said...

Haha - Im glad you think it's funny too. Maybe I just saw Stand By Me too many times as a kid. But come on, deaf or not, how dumb are you to get hit by a train?

Black Eyed Gurl said...

Aww Eric, we thought it was funny too. I mean, I think it might even qualify as ironic.
My whole issue was, who stands on or near train tracks when they know for damned sure they can't hear oncoming death???

Anonymous said...

YOur a bunch of fucking morons if you think its funny that some parents lost their child.
Who thinks they are going to get hit by a train just walking "NEXT" to the tracks. It was the snowplow on the train that was sticking out over the edge.

If it was your child I bet you wouldn't be sitting around this blog laughing about it.

Eric said...

Okay, here's a hint: the only public transportation you have LESS chance of getting hit by than a train is maybe a boat.


It's a train. There are tracks right there. Snow-plow or not, shouldn't your 17 year old children know better than to be walking along the train tracks?

I'm confident there was another way to get from point A to point B.

My coworker's brother is a railroad engineer who had the misfortune to be driving a train that hit a kid this summer. He'll live with that tragedy for the rest of his life.

You want to shed some tears, think about him, fuckwad!

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