LIRR HORROR
3 killed when truck tries to beat train at gate
Two Long Island Railroad trains traveling in opposite directions slammed into a truck trying to get across the tracks near the Westbury, L.I., station, killing all three people inside the vehicle, officials said.
Police and medics rushed to the School St. crossing at about 7:20 p.m. where a Manhattan-bound train from Ronkonkoma struck the truck, causing it to fly into a Hicksville-bound train from Penn Station heading in the opposite direction, officials said. The truck then caught fire, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said.
The mayhem shut down service in both directions.
All three people in the truck were pronounced dead at the scene, and Gov. Cuomo immediately called for an investigation of the horrific crash.
“We have confirmed that the gates were functioning,” LIRR President Phillip Eng said. “The gates were down. The lights were flashing. Witnesses have said that the vehicle went around the gates.”
The truck was so badly damaged that investigators still don’t know its make or model, Eng said.
“As we continue to gather information surrounding the incident, my heart goes out to the victims and their loved ones,” Cuomo said in a statement. “In the wake of this tragedy, I am calling for a full investigation into the collision, including with the complete cooperation of the MTA, state police, local law enforcement and the NTSB.”
Seven people were taken to hospitals for treatment of nonlife threatening injuries, the governor said.
The train engineer and conductor were also hospitalized, Eng said. “I know the engineer was very shaken up, but I understand he was able to walk to the ambulance,” he said. “The conductor was shaken up but in much better shape than the engineer.”
The impact of the crash derailed the train from Ronkonkoma, which smashed into the train station platform, destroying a portion of it.
“This is a very tragic, cautionary tale, that you just don’t try to beat the train. It’s not going to work,” Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said.
Damage to the platform and the tracks will cause service disruptions Wednesday morning, officials said.
About 900 passengers from both trains — 800 of them traveling on the Manhattanbound side — were evacuated safely, officials said.
Passengers inside the Manhattan-bound train felt a pair of bumps before the train ground to a halt, two Newsday workers on the train reported. One of the Newsday employees, Nirmal Mitra, posted photos on Twitter of the rescue efforts to evacuate train commuters.
“People started screaming,” said Newsday reporter Craig Schneider, who was on the train.
“I was sitting on the left side and all of a sudden the train really started rocking hard,” April Frazier, 31, of Brooklyn, who was heading to Penn Station, told Newsday. “Flames flared up on my side. I heard the conductor yell ‘Brake, brake!’ That’s when I saw the flames.
“That’s when it got real. I’m still shaken up. You don’t know. You think you might die. I’m thinking to myself ‘It might be my last day.”
Photos also showed damage to the side of the front train car after it went off the tracks and hit the railway station platform.
Identities of the three people killed were not immediately released.
The deadly crash happened lest than four hours after an LIRR train struck and killed a man between Freeport and Baldwin, an MTA spokesman told the Daily News.