(Milford, Connecticut – June 2, 2011)
The double-injury railroad crossing accident which hospitalized a Milford resident and her 7-year-old daughter Sunday afternoon wasn’t the family’s first dangerous train encounter at the Herbert Street unguarded, dangerous crossing.
Vicki Besse, the driver, said that her stepmother , Patricia Baker, was also hit by a train and injured at the same crossing 15 years ago. Like Besse, Baker’s injury was also insulted by Metro-North, which charged her not only with a traffic fine, but between $4,000 and $8,000 in damages. Metro-North Spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said that “It is our policy, if warranted, to go after the driver’s insurance company in such cases.”
The MTA M-N spokeswoman scoffed at witness statements regarding failure for the train’s engineer to sound a warning horn at the crossing, which has neither lights nor gates. “Witnesses say they did not hear a horn, but they live there,” Anders mused. “They never hear the horn, it blows all the time.”
