(San Francisco, California – December 3, 2011)
Three people died in three different accidents, separated by only 10 miles and two hours, in San Francisco Bay-area railroad/pedestrian tragedies Saturday, Dec. 4.
About 10:19 A.M., an unidentified pedestrian died just south of Stevenson Boulevard in Fremont, CA, when an Amtrak Capitol Corridor train with 40 passengers on board traveling on Union Pacific rails between Sacramento, CA and San Jose, CA struck the victim. The passengers were forced to stay on the train for 3 ½ hours before the train was allowed to pull into the Fremont station and transfer them to a shuttle bus for their San Jose, CA destination.
Less than an hour later, at 11:10 A.M., a northbound Caltrain “Baby Bullet” express train virtually duplicated a similar tragedy of exactly a week earlier when it struck and killed a man waiting on the passenger loading platform at the Palo Alto, CA California Avenue station. Caltrain express trains do not stop at California Avenue, and the man may have thought otherwise, just as another unfortunate passenger had when he was killed at the same location by another Baby Bullet train Saturday, Nov. 26.
Finally, at 12:13 P.M., a southbound Caltrain passenger train with 120 passengers on board struck and killed a female pedestrian just north of the Menlo Park station.
No identification on the second or third tragedies, other than gender, was offered, but the deaths were the 15th and 16th on Caltrain tracks thus far this year.
