Train hits, kills jogger

Officials work the scene where a 41-year-old woman was struck my a train while jogging Monday morning in Churchrock. She was pronounced dead shortly after being struck. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Phil Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — Justice Coonsis, 41, was struck and killed while jogging along the railroad tracks by an eastbound freight train east of Gallup Monday morning. She was pronounced dead at the scene. According to McKinley County investigators, Coonsis had been wearing headphones plugged into her iPod while she jogged along the tracks near Churchrock at around 10:39 a.m., which explains, at least in part, why she was unable to hear the locomotive as it approached.

Coonsis, whose driver’s license lists a Zuni address, had been jogging with a friend but the friend had fallen too far back to catch up and warn her; and the music playing on the headphones apparently drowned out the friend’s shouted warnings, as well as the conductor’s horn blasts.

Train-related fatalities are unusually common in the Gallup area. An eastbound Amtrak train struck 18-year-old Vonerick Begay August 9, killing him instantly. That accident occurred near Industrial Road just north of Paramount Liquor in West Gallup.

Lt. Rick White of the Gallup Police Department said Begay, who lived in Churchrock, was sitting on the north rail about 9 a.m. when the Amtrak conductor noticed him, sounded the horn and applied the brakes. White said Begay did not respond to the horn.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad spokesman Joe Faust indicated in August that as a general rule, a loaded train traveling 50 mph requires at least one mile to come to a complete stop with the brakes applied in full.