(The Associated Press circulated the following on September 5.)
DAVIS, Calif. — A freight train struck and killed a woman and her young daughter in what may have been a murder-suicide, Yolo County Chief Deputy Coroner Robert LaBrash said Tuesday.
Kahja Lauree Taylor, 35, of Sacramento died shortly before 11 p.m. Monday after a Union Pacific Railroad train slammed into the driver’s side of the car she was driving, LaBrash said. Taylor’s 9-year-old daughter also was killed.
LaBrash said evidence at the scene and other details support investigators’ beliefs that the crash was part of a murder-suicide, but he declined to elaborate.
Union Pacific Railroad spokesman Mark Davis said the two-person train crew saw the driver pull her car in front of the approaching train.
“A collision like this is horrific,” Davis said. “The crews know they can’t stop.”
The crew was not hurt. The 60-car train was traveling from North Platte, Neb., to Oakland when it collided with the vehicle about a mile east of Davis.
The name of Taylor’s daughter was not immediately released, LaBrash said.
With 36 deaths at highway-rail crossings in 2006, California had the second-highest number of such deaths that year, according to Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit rail safety organization based in Alexandria, Va. Texas led all states with 42 fatalities.