A 19-year-old Navasota native died early Friday afternoon of last week on the Union Pacific tracks in downtown Navasota.
Assistant City Manager Shawn Myatt says Navasota High School Graduate and Blinn College Kinesiology student, Fredzania Thompson met her end while modeling for a photo shoot along the Burlington Northern tracks.
“You have Union Pacific to the east,” Myatt explained,”and just right to the west is Burlington Northern. Burlington Northern has a train coming by, so she went to turn to walk across the Union Pacific tracks and didn’t see they also had a train approaching, and so she walked right into the path of that train.”
A train that Union Pacific estimates was probably moving at around 50 miles an hour, hauling grain from Oklahoma to Beaumont.
Neither Thompson’s photographer, nor anyone else on the train or off was injured according to Union Pacific’s Jeff DeGraff, who cautions that railroad property is private property and trespassing of any sort is discouraged.
He also said that, even though the company’s thoughts go out to the family, he hopes the community will take a lesson from this so we don’t have to go through this again.
The motionless 101 car train effectively blocked-off downtown Navasota for several hours Friday afternoon while Union Pacific investigators gathered evidence after Thompson was treated onscene, then taken to a hospital where she later passed away.