Mental Patient Killed by Freight Train : Suicide: The victim is the seventh person to die along the same stretch of track in recent months.

A man who had wandered away from a Sylmar mental health facility where he was being treated for suicidal tendencies was struck and killed after jumping in front of a freight train, authorities said Sunday.

Roger Sakamoto, 31, died instantly after he was struck by an eastbound Southern Pacific train about 10 p.m. Saturday near San Fernando Road and Bledsoe Street, according to police and the coroner’s office.

Witnesses told investigators that Sakamoto waited for the train, traveling between 40 and 50 m.p.h., and then jumped into its path. The engineer was unable to stop the Los Angeles-bound train before striking the man.

A spokesman for the coroner’s office said Sakamoto was a patient at an unidentified mental health facility, where he was undergoing treatment for suicidal thoughts. Family members told investigators that Sakamoto had attempted suicide in the past.

Nothing further was known about Sakamoto’s mental condition.

Sakamoto’s death brings to seven the number of people killed in recent months along a nine-mile stretch of track cutting through the northeast San Fernando Valley communities of Sylmar, San Fernando and Pacoima.

Authorities believe that about half of the incidents were suicides.

Six of the seven deaths involved Metrolink commuter trains.

Hoping to prevent further deaths, rail officials and community leaders are working to install fences and warning signs along the tracks. Plans call for the installation of 4,000 yards of wrought iron fence eight feet high, to be completed this summer at a cost of $864,000.

Even so, plans do not call for fences to be installed along the stretch of track where Sakamoto died. The fences would extend only as far north as Astoria Street, about a quarter of a mile south of Bledsoe Street.