2 Women Die After Being Hit by Train

Two women died after they were struck by a freight train at the Del Mar Amtrak station as one tried to rescue the other, who had stumbled while crossing the tracks.

While about two dozen commuters watched helplessly, Usha Waney, 47, of La Jolla, was struck as she rushed to cross the tracks, apparently because she mistakenly believed that the warning signal at a nearby road crossing marked the arrival of her Los Angeles-bound passenger train, authorities said. She died instantly.

Roberta Halpern, 44, of Encinitas, was hit as she and her husband made a frantic effort to rescue Waney, who reportedly was dazed when her head hit a rail, investigators said. Halpern died in a hospital Wednesday night.

Waney was among a group of people who began running toward the tiny red-brick depot from a parking lot on the west side of the tracks about 6:35 a.m. when they heard the crossing bells, San Diego County sheriff’s deputies said.

A San Diego clothing designer who had planned a business trip to Gardena, Waney tripped as she hurried across the tracks at an unauthorized, but heavily used, short cut fewer than six feet from the platform area, witnesses said.

Then she rose briefly to her knees as Halpern and her husband, Lee Kaiser--who were among the group rushing to beat the train--dashed back onto the tracks to help.

“She was crouched there on the tracks and they ran out to help her,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Carlos Medina. “But they only got her halfway off. The train just came by and cut her in two.”

Joel Volsky, 43, a local real estate agent who was standing on the platform, said several commuters witnessed the split-second drama but were frozen by the rush of the oncoming train.

“We all saw her fall,” he said of Waney. “You wanted to dash out and help her, but the train was coming. You just froze. You just froze.”

Waney’s body was pulled beneath the braking locomotive, which hit Halpern before it stopped about 150 yards up the tracks.

Halpern was airlifted by helicopter to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla where she died of massive internal and head injuries. Kaiser was not seriously injured.

“All you could hear were the horrible screams from people on the platform,” Volsky said. “After the woman was hit, people got down on the platform and started to pray instead of doing anything to help her. Those screams are still in my mind.”

Northbound rail traffic was delayed for three hours and a southbound train for 30 minutes, officials said. Los Angeles-bound commuters at the scene were taken to their destinations by bus, they said.

Waney and Halpern were the fifth and sixth pedestrians killed by trains in San Diego County since early October, authorities said.

Mike Martin, a spokesman for the Santa Fe Railroad in San Bernardino, said the company’s freight train rounded a blind curve just south of the depot at about 45 m.p.h. when the engineer saw the woman on the tracks about 250 yards away and blew his whistle.

“You’ve got four powerful locomotives and 43 freight cars traveling down those tracks--the whole train weighs more than 2,670 tons,” he said. “The engineer tried to stop the train, did the best he could.

“But you’ve got steel wheels on a steel rail. You can’t stop a train like that on a dime. Still, he’s very upset about what happened.”

Martin said the one freight train running daily between San Diego and Barstow usually makes its run overnight but that a recent renovation project had forced the trains to run during the day.

The $45-million LOSSAN Rail Corridor Rehabilitation Project is in the fourth and final phase of a four-year plan to replace worn tracks in San Diego and Orange counties, he said.