11-Year-Old Wins Darwin Award in Florida

 

Picture of Yazmin White added on January 5, 2018 11:38 p.m., following comment by Fisk Ellington Rutledge III
 

By Nicholas Stix

Most kids are pretty dumb, when it comes to really basic stuff.

I don’t know how many times I’ve grabbed my chief of research, just as he was about walk into traffic, or fall on his face.

When he’s walking on the street, he keeps the sidewalk under strict surveillance.

This was tolerable until mid-October, when he fired me, after over 13 years of getting him to school in the morning.

Tomorrow, he’s going to wear my super-warm, new parka to school. The problem there is that the coat is too big for him (and he’s four inches taller than me, but Land’s End was out of mediums), and the hood tends to fall forward and block one’s face. It also has massive side flaps, to keep out the wind. It’s so warm that it’s too hot on most days. And whenever I wear it, I push the hood back, so I can see and hear what’s going on around me. He, of course, doesn’t do that.

I tell him that he needs to protect himself against getting sucker punched or jumped. I’m talking to the wind.

Several years ago, I bought him a book by the late Jeff Cooper on self-defense. The chapter on situational awareness made no impression on him.

This sort of stuff is part of why you really need back-up kids.

There are millions of people—including yours truly—where you wonder how they ever survived childhood.

And then there are people who got murdered as adults, because they were listening to music, or talking on a cellphone, instead of paying attention to their social environment.
 

Train tracks in Haines City, Florida, where Yazmin White died 

Amtrak train fatally strikes 11-year-old wearing headphones, looking at phone
By Makenzie Koch
January 4, 2018 at 8:30 p.m.
WDAF-TV Fox4KC

HAINES CITY, Fla. – An 11-year-old Florida girl died Wednesday afternoon after she was hit by an Amtrak train while crossing the tracks, according to police.

The train's engineer told investigators that the girl, identified as Yazmin White, of Haines City, had headphones in her ears and was looking at her cellphone when the train hit her, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Department.

She was pronounced dead at the scene, just a few hundred feet from her family's home.

"She certainly didn't hear the train or she wouldn't have walked up on the track," Sheriff Grady Judd said at a press conference Thursday. "The engineer blew that horn solid for probably a quarter of a mile."

The train, with 12 passenger cars and two locomotives, was traveling at 68 mph at the time of the accident, according to officials.

The conductor, who isn't expected to face charges, said he tried to brake and blew the horn multiple times but White never looked up, WFTS reported.

Relatives told the station that the middle schooler had dreams of a career in music and loved the piano.

Judd said he could think of at least five children who had died locally in the last couple years after being hit while listening to headphones.

"You don't die when you're 11 years old, you're teflon, you're going to live forever," Judd said. "The absolute last thing she thought about was being run over by a train."

He added that his words shouldn't be taken as a condemnation of the young victims, who are not thinking about death when they're listening to their favorite music.

"It rips our heart out," Judd said. "That could be our child or grandchild, just as easy."