SAN FERNANDO : Suicide Ruled Out in Death of Couple Struck by Train

The death of a teen-age couple killed by a commuter train in Sylmar last week was accidental, not a double suicide, police said Tuesday. That satisfied mourning relatives but met with skepticism from young friends who said suicide fitted the couple’s unhappy lives.

Authorities had been investigating the possibility that Flora Carpio, 15, and her boyfriend, Marc Charles Ballin, 16, intentionally killed themselves Friday by walking along the tracks in the train’s path. Witnesses said the couple did not respond to the train’s horn, which sounded for at least 45 seconds before they were struck.

But Detective Tony Bartolotto of the Los Angeles Police Department said detectives have rejected the suicide theory for two reasons: the noisiness of the surrounding commercial area, which may have drowned out the engineer’s warning, and the couple’s devotion to each other. “If you’re in love, you’re not going to destroy yourselves. . . . I believe they just didn’t hear the whistle,” he said.