Toddler Killed, Cousin’s Arm Severed by Train

A toddler was crushed to death and his 2-year-old cousin’s arm was ripped off by a freight train whose engineer was unable to stop before hitting the children, Paso Robles police said Friday.

Doctors failed to reattach the arm of Madalain Adabel Hernandez, 2, during six hours of surgery after she was airlifted to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, Dr. George Balfour said in a telephone interview.

The youngsters were playing on the tracks Thursday afternoon in Paso Robles, 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles, when they were hit, said Paso Robles Officer Butch Cantalupo.

The Southern Pacific crew activated emergency brakes, blasted the horn and flashed lights but the train, traveling through the city at a legal 55 m.p.h., hit the children. “It was traveling about 40 m.p.h. at impact,” said Cantalupo.

Jose Contreras, 2, was crushed to death.

The dead youngster’s parents live in an apartment building about two blocks from the tracks just north of downtown, the officer said. The mother was at home at the time of the accident and the father was at work.

“We are trying to figure out why these children were there unsupervised,” said Cantalupo. The Contreras family was supposed to be watching both children, he said.

Surgeons failed in their attempts to graft veins from other parts of Madalain’s body into the arm that was severed. “There was nothing we could do,” Balfour said.

The girl was in stable condition Friday afternoon in the hospital’s intensive care unit and was expected to recover fully, said Balfour. “Down the road, she’ll get a prosthesis,” he said.

In addition to the severed arm, the girl suffered a broken leg, cuts and bruises. She was airlifted Thursday evening to the suburban Los Angeles hospital. The train was on a scheduled run from Los Angeles to Portland.