(The following story by Cecil Angel appeared on the Detroit Free Press website on August 27, 2009.)
DETROIT — Video from a surveillance camera on the Amtrak train that collided with a car in Canton on July 9 — killing five young people — clearly shows that the car drove around a downed crossing gate into the train’s path.
The video, released Thursday, also shows that the Amtrak engineer had sounded warnings as the westbound train approached the Hannan Road crossing at an estimated 70 m.p.h. en route to Chicago.
In the video, and according to Canton police reports, the black 2006 Ford Fusion can clearly be seen suddenly entering the path of the train from the left. The front seat passenger, Terrence Harris, 21, is seen with his arm on the window frame and the window is open. The report said Harris “lifts his arm and points at the train” and just before the impact he pulls his arm back through the window and leans inward, anticipating the inevitable impact.
At the moment of impact, the car is no longer in the camera’s view. The sound of the crash is heard, and an upward spray of glass fragments from the crushed car passes the train’s windshield. The camera dips slightly downward at the impact, then returns to position.
A scraping sound follows as the engineer has applied brakes that take more than 40 seconds to bring the train — with five passenger cars and engines on each end — to a stop near Lotz Road, south of Michigan Avenue. A few minutes later, a railroad employee appears in the camera frame looking toward the car’s wreckage — still out of view — wrapped around the front of the engine. He is visibly shaken.
The video was in a package of several police reports and crash scene photographs — some gruesome and startling — that Canton police released after announcing Thursday that they had concluded their investigation into the crash. The Free Press obtained the video and reports under the Freedom of Information Act.
Among the released information were autopsy reports from the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office showing the driver, Daniel Broughton, 19, of Woodhaven, and his passengers — Jessica Sadler, 14, of Wayne; brothers Sean Harris, 19, of Taylor and Terrence Harris, 21, of Stafford, Va., and Eddie Gross, 17, of Taylor — all tested negative for alcohol.
Police said that because Broughton was the driver, his toxicology report was more extensive, showing that he tested negative for drugs but positive for nicotine and diphenhydramine, a common ingredient in medications such as Benadryl. The autopsy reports did not show that the others were tested for cocaine, opiates and barbiturates.
Two of the passengers had suspected marijuana on them, according to the police reports.
Gross had a baggie containing “a very small amount of suspected marijuana.”
Sean Harris had “a torn baggie of green leafy substance believed to be marijuana” along with two empty small Ziplock baggies and another Ziplock baggie that police suspected also contained marijuana. The suspected marijuana weighed about 2 to 3 grams and police later destroyed it, the report said.
Before the impact, which knocked the engine out of the car, Broughton was in the driver’s seat, Terrence Harris in the front passenger seat, Sadler was in the backseat on the driver’s side, Gross in the middle of the backseat and Sean Harris sat in the backseat on the passenger side, the report said.
All were instantly killed and later officially pronounced dead at the scene, police reported.
A witness to the crash, the driver of a northbound white SUV that was stopped at the train crossing at Hannan Road, told police that he stopped as the warning lights came on and the warning gates came down.
He told police he noticed a black car coming up behind him “pretty fast,” at least 40 m.p.h. “The black car got into the oncoming traffic lane and went around” the SUV, “and then swerved around the warning gate arm and was then struck by the train.”