Grandmother is killed in head-on train crash
Ohio woman, 73, drove car into engine’s path at Delray Beach crossing.
DELRAY BEACH — A 73-year-old grandmother from Ohio was killed Wednesday after she drove into the path of an oncoming train in Delray Beach.
Investigators said the train hit Linda Short on the Florida East Coast Railway tracks where they cross Linton Boulevard just west of Federal Highway at 7:40 p.m. Police said they believe the woman, who was driving a rented 2017 Nissan Sentra, turned northbound on the tracks after the crossing gate came down. She was hit by a southbound train, according to investigators.
Short, who was headed eastbound on Linton, may have mistaken the railroad tracks for South Dixie Highway, which lies just a few feet beyond the easternmost crossing gates, city police said.
Short was a snowbird from Berea, Ohio, spending the winter months in Broward County, her son said Thursday. Geoffrey Short said his mother was running errands Wednesday when the crash occurred.
Before retiring, Short worked for about 20 years at Baldwin-Wallace University, a liberal arts college in Berea, where she was the coordinator of student housing, her son said.
“She was passionate about her students,” said Geoffrey Short, 52.
Linda Short was also a “groundbreaker” in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, her son said. She married an African-American man at a time when it was still taboo to do so and raised two boys while attending protests in Washington and Ohio. The Connecticut native was a divorced grandmother of five.
FEC spokesman Bob Ledoux said the speed limit for trains near Linton Boulevard is 60 mph, but that Short’s vehicle was struck while the train was traveling at about 40 to 50 mph. A check of the crossing’s gates and lights by investigators found that they were working properly, Ledoux said.
Incidents are rare at the railroad crossing, Ledoux said, and a check of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s database echoes that.
According to those records, the last fatal crash involving an FEC train took place Oct. 18, 1975, when a 66-year-old Delray Beach woman was killed after the vehicle that her husband was driving went around the crossing gates before stalling on the tracks. The woman reportedly got out of the car but was killed when the train struck her vehicle, which then struck her. The husband was critically injured.
The last crash of any kind at the Linton Boulevard-Dixie Highway crossing documented by DOT occurred March 22, 2007, when a driver proceeded into the crossing after the automated traffic control devices were activated. The driver then panicked and abandoned his car on the tracks. A train with 132 cars smashed into the vehicle at 42 mph, but no one was injured.
On Aug. 3, 2016, a 62-yearold Boca Raton woman was killed a few miles away on the same tracks when she tripped while crossing the rails and was hit by an FEC train.
Patrick Durocher, 49, owns a townhouse near the railroad tracks at Linton Boulevard and disputes the FEC’s account that the crossing is safe.
Durocher said he sees incidents near the crossing “all the time.”
The area around the tracks can be hard to see at night, Durocher said. Add the short distance between the crossing and Dixie Highway and the positioning of traffic lights and it’s easy to become disoriented momentarily, he said.
“It’s made me nervous driving through there,” Durocher said. “I’m 49, so if we’re getting confused, imagine somebody much older dealing with it.”