“She didn’t look like a transient,” he said. “[The engineer] said that she adjusted her hair, her pants and hesitated before she jumped in front of the train. He didn’t want to see it; he must have turned away. But he heard it, felt it and stopped the train.”
Passengers aboard Metrolink train No. 269, en route from Downtown Burbank to Sun Valley, were not injured, and the woman was declared dead at the scene, Quesada said.
A gas station employee who has worked at the northwest Burbank intersection for years said Monday that the train crossing is an unsafe corridor given the number of accidents he has seen.
Bede Bekele, a 35-year-old clerk at Exxon, said he saw at least one accident about six weeks ago, when a train and car collided at the tracks. He did not witness Saturday’s fatal incident but said the train crossing “is pretty dangerous.”
Metrolink officials, however, said this is the first train-related incident at that crossing, though it is not the first accident this year for the regional rail line.
Five passengers were injured in a Jan. 7 accident in Lancaster when a Metrolink train collided with a trailer that was being towed, spokesman Francisco Oaxaca said.
Saturday’s incident was the first fatal accident of the year involving Metrolink, though authorities ruled five Metrolink-related accidents in 2008 as suicides, he said.
The engineer, whose name was not released, has not been placed on leave, and the investigation is still ongoing, Oaxaca said.
Saturday’s incident comes amid increased scrutiny of Metrolink’s operations, a month after a panel of train specialists and oversight experts revealed a wide-ranging plan to address the rail company’s most pressing safety and organizational issues.
