Posted on 03/13/2006 9:40:38 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
AUSTIN -- The reigning Miss Deaf Texas died Monday afternoon after being struck by a train in Austin.
Authorities said 18-year-old Tara Rose McAvoy was walking near railroad tracks when she was struck by a Union Pacific train. A witness told Austin television station KTBC the train sounded its horn right up until the collision occurred.
McAvoy, who had been deaf since birth, won the state title in June. The state pageant director said she represented Texas "with dignity and pride."
McAvoy was to represent Texas at the Miss Deaf America pageant this summer.
I disagreed that this is universally "sad". Certain hideous people would find it funny, like the Darwin Awards for example.
And you did it in a way that tried to prop yourself up on a high moral horse, like you're above the muck, when you're the only person making the muck.
I have only illuminated the muck below me; no prop is needed. Your own gruesome username shows that you revel in death, though I see the decayed human skull that was formerly in your profile is now gone. Was it censored or did you learn some basic taste recently?
So, no, I phrased my question exactly as I meant it.
Of course you did - as a baseless, unanswerable accusation.
And I noticed you never answered it.
For the reason I just stated.
According to this article the girl was attempting to cross over the tracts and there was no crossing near the site where the accident happened. So, it could have simply been an accident and she didn't get across fast enough.
Miss Deaf Texas killed by train
Updated: 3/13/2006 6:22 PM
By: News 8 Austin Staff
Police say the woman hit and killed by a train in South Austin is Miss Deaf Texas.
The accident happened at West Oltorf and Thornton Road about 2:30 p.m. Monday.
Police say 18-year-old Tara McAvoy was walking home at the time. They say she was standing on the west side of the tracks, about 150 yards away from the Oltorf crossing.
The Union Pacific train was traveling northbound. Police say she was trying to cross the tracks.
There is no crossing near the site where the accident happened.
McAvoy graduated from Gallaudet University High School last year in Washington, D.C.
She was named Miss Deaf Texas on June 25, 2005. She was planning to compete in Miss Deaf America this summer.
Is functionally deaf.
Whatever happened to "always be aware of your surroundings"?
BTW, over 50 posts so far, and not a word about the train crew, helpless to prevent it. Several friends and neighbors are conductors or engineers for Burlington Northern, and this kind of inexorable bearing down on the oblivious is their worst nightmare. It isn't something that only her family will never forget.
Because she's pretty, she didn't deserve to die? I know a few not so pretty people who have beautiful souls.....shame on you!
Trains are very dangerous even if you can hear. As a part of a research project, I once went through the death records for the year 1918 in Arlington, TX. Turned out the top two causes of death were the big flu epidemic of that year ... and the railroad tracks. I've forgotten now how many people got struck by trains but it was a lot.
No one apparently has brought up a related matter.
Over-the-top safety regulations required weed-control maintenance people working on a railway to use hearing protection in SE Texas. A few years ago, a man working such a task, and wearing such hearing protection, was killed by a train despite the train whistle sounding and frantic yelling and waving by his workmates.
Wow, you too? It's really amazing that there aren't more people like us - you are the first adult I've met who's been deaf and then hearing like me. I still have problems, but they're mainly auditory processing problems. I was a lip-reader, and I still feel like I need to watch someone talking in order to understand what they're saying. Phones drive me nuts!! If I can't see a person talking, it's hard for me to understand them.
I don't have hearing aids yet (I'm 43) but I probably will someday in the not-to-distant future. I'm really glad you found some that work for you!
The hardest part of deafness is the fact that no one knows your deaf - others just think you are stupid or rude. But there are so many things I learned from being deaf - and I know that even in the silence, life is beautiful. How many times I have heard people say "oh, I wouldn't want to live if I were handicapped". I know they are saying it out of ignorance, but I can testify - life was still fun, still wonderful, I still loved and was loved, even when I couldn't hear. Life was sometimes more difficult, but it was still worth living. Hearing is just one very small part of living, and I am still me - with or without it.
I hope that this girl felt the same. Witnesses say she was simply trying to cross the tracks - that means that she simply didn't catch those forward vibrations. So sad.
Suicide.
There is no other concievable explanation.
Okay... for starters there is quite a bit here to talk about and no one should get all hostile.
I think it is crazy for this beautiful woman to get whacked by a train. Has anyone heard Larry the Cable Guy talk about the guy that got hit by a train? Basically trains don't just jump out at ya. The phrase walking "near" the tracks is bogus. Unless you are trying to be technical. To get whacked by a train you have to be practically "on" the tracks. If you are close enough to get whacked AND you don't know there is a train coming... you have more problems than just deafness.
I am a grown man with damn few fears in life... but let me say that just being in proximity to train tracks sends my senses into "alert" phase.
There is more to this story. I feel sorry for this girl... but something is up. Either depression or unchartable folly (being nice there) or something else.
I seem to recall it was about 60% loss of hearing at the time. Caused by an inner ear infection after a really bad cold at the time, and I had to take antibiotics for several years after that just so it wouldn't happen again, and to build up my immune system.
By the time I was 6 years old, my parents had me screened for hearing aids, and not long after, I was enjoying hearing again. The most difficult part of that was having to go to speech pathologists right at the school for 6 years to speak and hear clearly, and all that ended right around age 12.
So, I even know how to read lips in difficult situations as well.
I got a pair of digital hearing aids a couple years ago, and those really help, even in noisy environments like restaurants, and work much better than the analog hearing aids I had used for years. They have like 10,000 different adjustments that the doctor can make, but he only adjusted 6 of those settings. (volume and equalization).
A couple years ago, I had an MRI and CAT scan done to see if I was a candidate for a cochlear implant. They concluded the bone structure was such that I could get those implants, but my hearing is right below the threshold of being a candidate. My hearing specialist said generally those with 80% or higher hearing loss are candidates, and mine was something like 65% in the right ear, and 72% in the left ear.
So he put me on hearing aids for now, and has me come in for a hearing screening once a year. So the implants are more or less still an option.
I'm suggesting that, because she was pretty, regardless of her other attributes, her loss is a loss to the gene pool and, thus, she wouldn't qualify for a Darwin Award, regardless of the merits.
"...why not just pick on retarded people if they're going to do that?"
That's a stupid comment.
"Why in the world would anyone walk so close to railroad tracks that they risk being hit by a train?"
I was wondering the same.
"What a beautiful name
TARA ROSE"
I agree, 'tis a lovely Irish name.
Awful story. However, Why did she not feel the vibrations?
My heart goes out to her family.
"I was profoundly deaf in my early childhood (unknown to my parents until discovered later), and corrected by surgery when I was five.
Same here, but we didn't catch it in time, and surgery wasn't an option, although hearing aids have helped for the last 29 years."
I went the opposite way. I had "20-20" hearing most of my life and then virus struck several times, degrading my hearing several steps downward until I was left with about 40%.
I'm still better off than deaf people in that regard, but having had great hearing taken for granted has made the loss hard to take.
My hearing aids, though digital, amplify everything better than they amplify speech. As for being in any room where more than one person is talking, forget speech recognition.
Tragic, simply tragic.
Just yesterday a little boy in a Boston suburb died when hit by a car. He was wearing running shoes called 'wheelies' -- they turn into rollers/skates. The principal said the kids weren't allowed to wear them in school, and the boy was waiting for the school bus when hit. TV showed a picture of similar sneakers with what looked like rollers attached to the heels, but I'm still trying to figure out how this happened. The boy was 9.
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