(The following story by Cecil Angel, Amber Hunt, Tammy Stables Battaglia and Matt Helms appeared on the Detroit Free Press website on July 9, 2009.)
DETROIT — Four young Downriver residents and a Virginia man were killed today after they drove around a crossing gate in Canton Township and were hit by an Amtrak train.
One victim was identified by her mother as Jessica Sadler, 14, of Wayne, who was staying with her grandmother nearby the crash scene.
The four others were young men: an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old from Taylor, a 19-year-old from Woodhaven, and a 21-year-old from Stafford, Va., according to a police press release at 9:30 p.m.
They were later identified as Jessica’s boyfriend, Eddie Gross, 18, of Taylor; a 20-year-old from Taylor, plus brothers Sean Harris, 19, from the Detroit area, and Terrence Harris, 21, of Stafford, Va.
‘I felt a bump and like metal scraping’
“It’s very tragic, certainly for the family and friends of the people in the vehicle, but also for our crew,” Chicago-based Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. “There’s nothing they can do … to stop vehicles from disregarding warnings about an approaching train.”
Witnesses said the young people were headed northbound on Hannan Road between Michigan Avenue and Van Born just after noon when they went around crossing gates lowered at the railroad tracks, Canton Township Police Sgt. Craig Wilsher said.
The train pushed the teens’ car to the Lotz Road crossing, and the victims were dead at the scene, he added. No one has reported problems with the crossing gates recently, Wilsher said.
Eunice Riddle, 68, was a passenger on the train returning to her home in Gary, Ind., when the train hit the car. “I felt a bump and like metal scraping,” she said.
Riddle was traveling with her granddaughter, Kenya Gaines, 14, after attending the Federation of the Blind conference in Detroit with 11 friends.
FaShandra Nixon, 45, of Aurora, Ill., also with the group, felt the jolt as her golden Labrador Retriever service dog, Mr. Carson, sat on the train’s floor next to her.
“You don’t want to think the worst,” she said. And despite a conductor telling her and the other passengers they’d hit an “object,” they realized it was a car, she said.
“We knew; we could smell gasoline and I started getting nauseous,” she said. “Immediately I’m thinking, ‘Do we need to get out of here?’ Immediately, I started praying.”
Her dog stayed on the floor next to her, keeping Nixon from panicking. “He stayed calm, so I did, too,” she said, adding that the dog once saved her from a kitchen fire in her home.
“He’s a docile dog. This dog has saved my life many times.”
Amtrak officials ran the engine periodically to circulate air through the train cars as the passengers waited for the engine that struck the car to be unhooked. The train then went to the Dearborn station, where the passengers loaded onto four motorcoach buses headed to Ann Arbor, Chicago and places in between.
Richard Kilcher, 35, of St. Clair Shores, who got on the train in Royal Oak with his son, R.J., 5, was headed to the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum for the day. He was surprised they had hit a car.
“It almost felt like they hit the brakes or hit a bump,” he said. “We couldn’t tell what was going on.”
Kilcher said they’d head to the museum, which was closed by the time they got off the train, another day.
“We’re just sad for the families,” Kilcher said as he disembarked at the Dearborn station. “I wish them the best.”
Dylan Curtsinger, 13, of Dearborn, walked up and down the train’s aisle as passengers waited for hours on the tracks, ferrying information to his mom, Laura, 48, and other passengers.
“You saw tow trucks coming, police all along the side, and everyone was worried,” said Dylan, “The only person that got off the train was a person who was like 80 years old that was having breathing problems; the firemen came and got her.”
Skateboard in hand, Dylan got on one of the motor coaches headed to Chicago with his mother, who is attending the American Library Association conference there.
“You always hear on the news that these tragedies happen, but you never think this would happen to you,” he said. “That’s devastating to hear.”
Medical Examiner’s Office arrives to transport bodies
After a 3_ -hour wait on the tracks, the train began moving down the tracks back to Dearborn around 4:03 p.m. to drop off the passengers.
But the west-pointing engine on the train remained behind, the passenger vehicle still stuck to its front.
Police removed a covering on the car and on the vehicle about 4:10 p.m. to reveal a black car, its trunk facing southbound.
The front of the car was lodged beneath the train engine, the car’s wheels buckling beneath the crumpled hood.
Officers surveying the scene were trying to determine the best way to extricate the victims. Media were asked to back away from the tracks to allow emergency workers space to begin the removal process.
At 4:57 p.m. a flatbed tow truck from Westland Car Care Towing arrived to remove the car.
At 5:25 pm, the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office arrived. Sgt. Mark Gajeski with the Canton Township Police said the bodies would next be transported to the county morgue for next-of-kin notification and autopsy tests.
At Hannan, where the impact occurred, the car’s front bumper lies near the tracks, chunks of car debris strewn along the tracks headed toward Lotz.
Crash pushed the car for about a mile
Gajeski said the crash pushed the car about one mile. The train stopped in an area near a landfill.
The crash was reported by witnesses sitting in their cars behind the sedan carrying the young people.
Magliari said the system’s train 353 was headed to Chicago from Detroit and Pontiac with 170 passengers and four crew when the crash happened.
No one aboard was injured, he said.
Police were able to track the owner of the car but had yet to talk to her.
Police said there’s is also a tape of the accident from a local business and has been turned over the accident investigators.
Magliari said there were no indications of any malfunction on the train before the collision at 12:10 p.m. Police said the train typically travels about 67 miles per hour at the site.
The track in that area is owned by Norfolk Southern Corp. Spokesman Rudy Husband said the company was testing crossing gates at the intersection to make sure they were functioning properly. He declined further comment.
119 deaths last year in Amtrak accidents
The last train fatality in Canton was on Feb. 13 when a 62-year-old Canton man got out of his car and walked onto railroad tracks in front of an approaching Amtrak train on Haggerty, just north of Van Born.
Last year, 119 people died in Amtrak accidents, usually when trains struck vehicles or pedestrians at railroad crossings, according to figures from the Federal Railroad Administration.
The National Transportation Safety Board hasn’t yet decided whether to investigate the crash, spokesman Keith Holloway said.
“Preliminary information indicates that there was no derailment, there were no fatalities on board the Amtrak” train, he said. “We don’t always investigate grade-crossing accidents.”