Parents blame the train
Four Houston-area teenagers are dead after the stolen SUV they were riding in hit a parked train around 4:12 a.m. (remember, nothing good happens after 4:00 a.m.):
“Excessive speed might have been involved,” Lt. Darryl Coleman with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said. “We are way early in this investigation and it’s going to take a long time to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s.”
Lt. John Martin, spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said a train with about 100 cars was stopped when the driver of a Jeep Cherokee, who was headed east, slammed into it.
“Apparently the driver didn’t see the train and the driver hit a tanker car,” Martin said. “The impact tore the roof off the Jeep and the rest of the vehicle continued underneath the train.”
Deaths were instant
The four backseat passengers — Colette Windham, Loral Moyers, Macy Moyers and Austin Davis — died instantly, he said. Authorities said the ages of the four ranged from 17 to 13 but a family member of one of the dead girls said she was 12. Nearly eight hours after the crash, the gender and ages of the victims remained unsettled. Questions remained about whether there were three boys and three girls involved or two boys and four girls.
The 15-year-old male driver of the Jeep, Bobby Davis, was taken by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Hospital and listed in critical condition, Martin said. The front seat passenger, 15-year-old Blake Barger, was taken to Hermann and listed in stable condition, he said. Families and friends of the injured boys gathered at the hospital this morning.
This is a tragic accident that didn’t have to happen. You have:
- an inexperienced, under-aged, unlicensed driver
- he was driving too fast (posted speed limit was 30 mph)
- a stolen vehicle that the kids were out joy riding in
- it was around 4:00 a.m. in the morning, when these kids should have been home
The parents are understandably upset and shaken. But their anger is misdirected. The fault of this accident lies 100% with their children. Instead they are blaming — the railroad company:
As the bodies of the victims lay nearby, Union Pacific spokesman Joe Arbona was berated by the Moyers family and other area residents because of the lack of active signals at the crossing.
“This is a dangerous place and you need to do something about it,” grandfather Donald Moyers said. “I’m going to go on a crusade.”
Arbona expressed sorrow at the family’s loss but the family accused him of being at the scene to “sugarcoat” the situation.
Come on people — why is it so damn hard for people to accept responsibility and blame for bad things that happen?
I’m sorry that your kids are dead. But it’s not the trains fault, or the engineers fault, or the railroads fault that your kid drove a speeding and stolen SUV full of other curfew breaking kids into a parked train. It’s his fault. And his fault alone.
Wow. You’ve got kids from what appears to be four different families out joyriding all night long and not one family knew they were gone? Amazing.
Left by kma on June 14th, 2007 at 7:53 pm