Metrolink Train Hits Car; 4 Killed

Three adults and a baby girl were killed Wednesday night when their car spun out of control at a Riverside railroad crossing and careened into the path of a Metrolink commuter train, authorities said.

The crash--the second Metrolink accident this month to end in tragedy--occurred at 6:39 p.m., just four minutes before the train was scheduled to complete its run from Downtown Los Angeles, said Metrolink spokesman Peter Hidalgo.

The identities of the victims--a male driver and his three female passengers--were not immediately known. None of the 100 passengers aboard the train were injured, Hidalgo said.

Riverside Police Sgt. Bob Hanson said the accident happened at the Jurupa Road rail crossing in Riverside, “right about sunset when the sun was very strong.”

Hanson said the westbound Oldsmobile had swerved to avoid rear-ending a car in front of it, which had stopped abruptly when the crossing gate dropped at the intersection. Out of control, the swerving vehicle crashed through the gate and onto the tracks, he said.

Officials said the 400-ton locomotive hit the car at a speed of about 60 m.p.h., hurling it about 250 feet and killing everyone inside.

The deaths brought Metrolink-related fatalities to 25 since the service’s inception in 1992. Hidalgo said 13 of the deaths occurred this year. About half of them have been suicides, he said. Most of the remainder happened when motorists and pedestrians tried to beat a train across the tracks, he said.

On Aug. 15, three people were killed when they tried to take a shortcut across a Metrolink track in Glendale. Officials said the victims--a 7-year-old girl, her mother and her grandfather--apparently ignored or did not hear the warning blasts from the oncoming train.