Cannot access event.text from my custom event

Question

I have a cutom event, and I want to access event.text when my custom event is dispatched and handled.
package myCustomEvents.events
    import flash.events.Event;
    public class ItemRemoved extends Event
        public static const REMOVED_ITEM_EVENT:String = "itemRemoved";
        private var _removedItem:String;
        public function get removedItem():String {
            return _removedItem;
        public function ItemRemoved(removedItem:String)
            super(REMOVED_ITEM_EVENT);
            _removedItem = removedItem;
    // I have some html content with <a> </a> link tags in the textarea
            <mx:TextArea link="dispatchEvent(new ItemRemoved(event));"  />
private function removeSelectedItems (event:ItemRemoved):void
                            // I want to access event.text here
                            var theText:String = event.text
Any ideas how to access event.text in this case? I get it to work when I do not use a custom event, and I cannot extend TextEvent.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Well, I thought I got it but I did not.
In any event, my solution is to extend the TextEvent event.
But I need a little hint on how to do that, since it does not have a clone() method to override like the Event class.
I can't do this while extending the TextEvent event
override public function clone():TextEvent
            return new ItemSelectedEvent(_selectedItem);