Like a dead dog on the tracks: Injustice in small town Texas, Part 1, the Physical World
When this happened, I was hurting for a very close friend so badly that I shared the story on DU & got such good support, nurturing and info that I shared all of that with Melaney's mother, my friend. Now she has asked me to post this on DU. She has now joined DU, but is too weak at the moment to share herself. Here, from daily KOS, it is:
"As brilliant and loving as she was beautiful. Melaney Parker was married two months to a wonderful man, had plans to move to Austin, Texas and pursue graduate studies. A promising future was lost. Her family believes she was murdered, but an immediate determination of suicide was made before any investigation was done. No one has explained why.
The nightmare began on the morning of Thursday, August 8, 2013. My daughter, Melaney Parker, cashed out of her favorite bar at 12:01 a.m. after a night of dancing and flirting with her new husband, found him and kissed him on the lips, and said love you, see you at home. Her body was lying on the tracks when struck by a Union Pacific Railroad train at 12:23 a.m. After reviewing the video taken by the train, the Union Pacific Railroad claims representative told an attorney who volunteered to assist us, that she appeared to have been placed on the tracks and seemed to be unconscious or dead, not moving or flinching as the train approached. Our attorney subsequently watched the video and agreed, she appeared to be unconscious or dead as the train approached. The claims representative said that he pleaded with the Justice of the Peace and the Sheriff to open this case as a homicide. They insisted it was a suicide.
There were so many questions that were never answered. An immediate determination of suicide was made and it has been a struggle trying to understand how an assumption, or excuse, was used to deny my daughter what she deserved. She did her part to serve her country and many others in Chicago and in Austin, and was rewarded by being treated like a dead dog on the tracks.
After talking to witnesses and friends about the night of her death, I found that my daughter was happy, dancing to one of her favorite local bands, flirting with her husband of two months, talking about her future plans to move to Austin and go to graduate school, thrilled about her first commission as a graphic artist to illustrate a new novel, and was generally having fun. As she did so many other times, she left the bar to walk home in a town that claimed to be safe, and expected her husband to follow within 30 minutes, because that was their rule. (It takes six to seven minutes to walk from the bar to their house.) He had to be home thirty minutes after her. A witness said she cashed out, found her husband, kissed him on the lips and said, "I Love you, see you at home." He helped the band load up, because they were longtime friends, talked to a couple of people outside and tried to make his way home within thirty minutes. The train was stopped on the tracks and it took him some time to finally get home. When he arrived home, she was not there...".
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