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Moments After Photo Was Taken, Aspiring Model Was Dead

Fredzania Thompson struck by train in Texas
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 16, 2017 8:45 AM CDT
Moments After Photo Was Taken, Aspiring Model Was Dead
Fredzania Thompson poses moments before her death.   (Facebook)

It was Fredzania Thompson's dream to pursue a career in modeling, so much so that her family says she decided to pause her college studies and go after it. "It's what she had started to do the day she was deceased," her mom tells the Bryan-College Station Eagle. Thompson, 19, was posing for photos near the intersection of two sets of railroad tracks in Navasota, Texas, on Friday when she was fatally struck by a train. According to witnesses, Thompson—who hoped to use the photos as part of a modeling portfolio—saw that a BNSF Railway train was approaching on one set of tracks around 12:45pm. But in her effort to get away, she stepped onto the second set of tracks and was hit by a Union Pacific train she hadn’t realized was traveling in the opposite direction. She died on the way to a hospital.

A haunting photo shared online shows Thompson smiling on the tracks moments before the incident. It was a smile that seemed a perfect fit for modeling, her fiance, 25-year-old Darnell Chatman, tells KBTX. He adds that her death is all the more painful because of its effect on his 7-year-old son, and because the couple had just found out they were expecting a child of their own. Chatman says Thompson called him two weeks ago and said, "You're going to be a dad again." It isn't clear how far along Thompson was in her pregnancy. Navasota's director of public safety tells BuzzFeed this "horrific incident" is just one example of why photo shoots on railroad tracks are a bad idea. "Trains come intermittently and you don't know when they come," he says. (This husband's frantic effort to save his wife from a train failed.)

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