AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- The reigning Miss Deaf Texas died after being struck by a train, officials said. Tara Rose McAvoy, 18, was walking Monday near railroad tracks when she was struck by a Union Pacific train, authorities said. A witness told Austin television station KTBC the train sounded its horn right up until the accident occurred. McAvoy, who had been deaf since birth, won the state title in June and represented the state "with dignity and pride," state pageant director Laura Loeb-Hill told The Associated Press via e-mail Monday night. McAvoy was to represent Texas at the Miss Deaf America pageant this summer, Loeb-Hill said. McAvoy graduated last year from the Texas School for the Deaf, attended Austin Community College and then started at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., in January, but had returned to Texas, Loeb-Hill said. Link
Why would a deaf person walk near a train track? That's almost as bad as a blind person crossing an interstate....
To get hit by a train. In all seriousness, this is actually really sad. I too am wondering why she was there in the first place.
D.A.R.E. used to tell us stories about people walking with headphones and getting killed all the time, but I never believed that it actually happened. No music is loud enough to block out a freakin' train...but I guess if you're deaf it wouldn't matter. Though, wouldn't you be able to feel the vibrations or something? It seems odd that she would ever walk along train tracks at all.
If you're not on the rails, but close to the tracks, you probably wouldn't feel the vibrations. Man, a lot of terrible things happening to young people in the Austin area, lately. (like those 5 UT students. )
This hits way too close to home. One of my college buddies was killed in a freak car/train collision around Splendora in 1994. peace be with her family...
Whenever I lived in Magnolia, there used to be car/train collisions like once a year. At this one intersection, it happened like three times in about 5 years. One year, three high school students got hit and killed. The next year, a friend of mine's uncle got hit and killed. After that, they closed that crossing down.
Yeah A lot of those old country roads in Texas don't have warning crossings for railroad tracks and they're crazy dangerous. Especially at night.
I don't know if it's an urban legend, but I've heard of people being hit by the subway because they couldn't hear the train coming while they turned around to see if the subway was close.
I take it you've never been on a subway. You'd have to be deaf not to hear that thing coming. Now if two come in at the same time, that might cause some confusion.
yea, but on a country road there's nothing blocking your field of vision. how could you not see an oncoming train? don't they have headlights?
Without getting too much into it or getting to morbid. He was in the car with his father (he was driving) and they were having one of those classic father/son "discussions" about his future. My friend is very animated and he was just so much into the conversation and looking at his dad in the passenger seat that he just didn't notice the oncoming train. It happened in an instant. Like I said, it was a freak accident. His father survived and to this day still blames himself.
This was my thought. Walking on train tracks has got to be fairly high on the list of things that deaf people don't do.
I don't believe for a second that was the circumstance. When I was her age, I went out of my way to do things, "you don't do." Deaf or not, she was 18. It's terrible.
A friend of mine used to work for Texas School for the Deaf. She read this and thought suicide, too. Deaf people use vibration to alert them to sounds they cannot hear. She said there is no way this girl didn't know that train was there.
