(Maryville, Tennessee – March 31, 2012)
Two teenaged hunters, identified by Blount County, TN Sheriff’s officers and residents as Jessie Hines Jenkins, 18, and Kevin Ray Stinnett, 17, “best friends” who “coon hunt these woods all the time and they have to cross the tracks all the time,” were struck and killed about 1:45 A.M. Saturday morning by a CSX freight train consisting of two locomotives and 68 freight cars traveling between Cincinnati, OH and Hamlet, NC as they crossed CSX tracks in pursuit of their pastime in Maryville, TN.
Both teens were students at William Blount High School, and The University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center performed autopsies on both victims Monday.
Stormie Foust, who lives near the CSX railroad tracks in the vicinity of the 700 block of Clover Hill Road near Peters Road in Maryville, TN, said police learned one of the boys’ mothers had reported her son missing, and described certain tattoos her son had, enabling officers to confirm, sadly, that he was one of the victims.
One respondent recalled that “If you’re walking on railroad tracks and a train approaches you from the rear, it is almost impossible to hear that train.”
WATE-TV Knoxville, TN Reporter Hana Kim said that “The devastation is far-reaching, from family members to a whole community in shock after two young lives are cut short.”
