BALTIMORE — Thomas Crowley Jr. knew that his son liked to go four-wheeling along the railroad tracks in Chesaco Park but never worried too much about it. After all, Crowley said, he used to do the same thing when he was a kid, 20 years ago, the Baltimore Sun reports.
But yesterday, he was wondering if he should have said something. On Saturday evening, a southbound Amtrak train struck Justin Crowley, 17, and his cousin, Bobby Pike, 19, from behind as they were riding Pike’s all-terrain vehicle along the tracks near Back River, between Essex and Rosedale.
The crash killed Crowley and severely injured Pike, who was listed in critical condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore.
“It was rainy yesterday, so they were just having a fun time in the mud, I guess,” Thomas Crowley said at his home opposite Bear Creek Park in Dundalk. “It happened, and there’s nothing I can do now. … I’m just devastated.”
Last night, Amtrak police were investigating the accident, which occurred about 6:40 p.m. Saturday. The track was closed for 35 minutes after the crash as passengers were transferred to another train.
According to Amtrak Officer George Sherrod, train crashes involving all-terrain vehicles are not uncommon. ATV engines are often so loud that riders are unable to hear the smooth whoosh of electrically powered trains, he said.
“The noise masks the sounds of the train, and the train is on top of you before you know it,” he said.
The victims’ relatives speculated that the location of the crash might have also played a role – the teen-agers were hit at a trestle over Moores Run, a quarter-mile south of a curve in the tracks, giving the train’s operator little time to brake. Amtrak officials haven’t released the train’s speed but said trains on that line go as fast as 115 mph.
According to Thomas Crowley, the route of choice for many local youths is to ride alongside the tracks between Eastpoint Mall and the trestle, where an unfenced section near a line of Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. transformers allows easy access from Old Philadelphia Avenue and Chesaco Park, below a Beltway overpass. The road access makes it possible to bring ATVs there by truck, Crowley noted.
“It hasn’t changed much there since I went there,” Crowley said.
The site is about three miles from the boys’ Dundalk neighborhood, but it is popular because new development and limitations on ATVs have left few places to ride closer to home, relatives and neighbors said.
Amtrak police said yesterday that they would investigate the track access point, which one neighbor said used to be blocked by a fence that youths easily cut through.
Relatives said young Crowley and Pike were more like brothers than cousins. They did everything together – hunting, riding dirt bikes and ATVs, and fixing engines.
For the past few months, they lived together. His parents having recently separated, Crowley moved to Pike’s house in the 7900 block of Wise Ave., opposite Patapsco High School.
“They were just good kids, and they were pretty tight,” said William Biewer Sr., Justin Crowley’s uncle.
Pike graduated from Patapsco High, where family members say he excelled on the football team, and has been working as an electrician.
Crowley, who got his first three-wheel ATV when he was 6 years old, dropped out of school this year and was working as a carpet-layer. A skilled mechanic and carpenter, he was also helping with renovations at the Pike home.
Yesterday, calls shuttled among the hospital, Thomas Crowley’s house in Dundalk and the home of Justin Crowley’s mother, Linda Crowley, in Baltimore’s Greektown, where she sat with his sister, Amber, 14, and his girlfriend, Brittney Bell.
Despite discouraging reports from the hospital, friends and relatives consoled themselves with an account from rescuers at the crash scene: that when they found the boys in Moores Run beneath the trestle, Pike, who had massive injuries, told them to go to Crowley first.
“When they found [Pike], he was saying, ‘Help my cousin, help my cousin,'” said family friend James Aunquoe. “He’s a tough kid.”