(The following report appeared on the Spokane News Tribune website on November 20.)
SPOKANE, Wash. — The man laid his head on the railroad tracks in Spokane Valley and stared at the oncoming freight train.
The BNSF train engineer sounded her horn, put on her emergency brakes and averted her eyes.
“When we talked to her later, she was shaking and sobbing,” Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Dave Reagan said after the incident last week. “They are put in a horrible position to have to deal with someone else’s life decision.”
BNSF and Union Pacific railroad officials say train engineers are trained to expect they’ll kill someone at some point in their career. Nationwide, 565 people were killed on railways during the first eight months of this year.
The BNSF train was traveling 50 mph when the 20-something man put himself in its path. At that speed – even with empty rail cars – it would have taken nearly a mile to stop the locomotive.
The suspected suicide marked the 14th in Washington on all railways since the beginning of the year, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. Fourteen is Washington’s annual average for railway deaths, based on statistics from the Federal Railroad Administration.