AUSTIN, Texas -- Austin police now say the reigning Miss Deaf Texas was killed by a freight train apparently while text-messaging family and friends on her cell phone. Tara Rose McAvoy, 18, was killed Monday while walking along the Union Pacific tracks in South Austin. Police said she apparently was walking from her family's home to her mother's workplace when she was hit. McAvoy was to represent Texas at the Miss Deaf America pageant this summer in Palm Desert, Calif.
Police said the train's crew spotted her and sounded the locomotive's horn, but got no response. The lead locomotive's snowplow -- which extends 16 inches from either track -- clipped McAvoy, killing her. Police said her family said they'd never known her to walk along those tracks before. Gene Mirus is a deaf studies instructor at Gallaudet, which is the nation's leading university for the hearing-impaired. He told the Austin American Statesman that many deaf people who think they can detect approaching trains by their vibrations are mistaken. |