Phillita Jill Ammons of Harrodsburg filed a complaint in Mercer County Circuit Court against Norfolk Southern and an unnamed company that may have performed maintenance along the railroad track where her daughter was killed.
Ammons’ daughter, Sophia Dawn Ammons, also of Harrodsburg, was killed at 9:30AM when the 1991 GMC Jimmy truck she was driving was struck by a cargo train along the railroad crossing of Bohon Road. The train hit the front end of Sophia’s pick-up truck causing her to be ejected from her vehicle and die from blunt force trauma to the head.
Investigators believe that the 19-year-old simply did not see the train because the sun was in her eyes. Ammons was the only one in the vehicle at the time of the accident. The railroad crossing is marked with lights, but it does not have any crossing arms. Phillita Jill Ammons feels this safety measure could have saved Sophia’s life.
Sophia’s mother is seeking unspecified damages. She believes that the train did not blow its whistle in a timely manner and that Norfolk Southern “failed to properly inspect and maintain its crossing signals in spite of knowledge of their periodic malfunctioning.” The lawsuit also states that Norfolk Southern “over the passage of time, negligently failed to maintain the vegetation and thus allowed the vegetation to obscure the view of a train approaching the Bohon Road crossing from Harrodsburg until the last instance before the crossing when approaching Bohon Road from the direction Sophia Ammons was approaching at this fatal accident.”
The Louisville injury attorneys at Gray and White extend our sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Sophia Ammons.