15 -year- old struck in San Bruno By Julia Scott, STAFF WRITER Article Created: 04/21/2008 02:32:54 AM PDT Click photo to enlarge Friends of Anthony Rea, who was killed by a Caltrain on Saturday, Miguel Ayar, right, and Roger... * « * 1 * 2 * » Friends and family of a 15-year-old boy struck and killed by a train near the San Bruno Caltrain station Saturday evening describe the event as a tragic accident, although transit officials continue to investigate. On Sunday, the San Mateo County coroner's office identified Anthony Rea of South San Francisco as the victim of a rail crossing incident at the San Bruno Caltrain station about 5:35 p.m. Saturday. Train service was stopped for more than an hour after Rea, a freshman at El Camino High School, was killed. Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said Sunday that a Caltrain engineer observed Rea trespassing on the southbound railroad tracks moments before the collision. "He went around a lowered gate," Dunn said. The San Mateo County Sheriff's Transit Operations Division is investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident, Dunn said. The San Mateo County Coroner's Office is also investigating whether Rea's death was accidental. One of Rea's best friends, 14-year-old Patrick Legaspi, witnessed the death of his friend and described it as a horrific accident. He said they had just disembarked from a northbound train with a third friend after a day of skateboarding in San Mateo. They ignored the lowered gate and warning lights and started across the pedestrian crossing to get to the other side of the tracks. "There was this gate that tells us not to go when there were trains — we just went around it," recalled Legaspi on Sunday, speaking by telephone. "When he saw the train left, he just got on the board and started riding. I guess he didn't see the other train coming, and it just hit him." Legaspi said Rea didn't hear the southbound train approach because he was listening to music through his headphones at full blast. "When he was right on the tracks I tried to get him, but he was kind of far out of my reach. I was shouting at him, telling him to stop, but he didn't hearme," said Legaspi. "He was a very funny and cool friend." Saturday's death is the fifth Caltrain fatality this year. In 2007, the agency recorded eight deaths, far below the 17 deaths of 2006. High school friends of Rea's spent several hours Sunday consoling Rea's mother, grandmother and older sister at their home on El Camino Real. Longtime neighbor Gina Tandra said the family was devastated and that she and some other neighbors were chipping in to pay for the funeral, to be held later this week at the Garden Chapel Funeral Home in South San Francisco. A bank account is being created for donations to the family, she added. "I was hoping that people outside the area could donate because the family is low income," she said. The news came as such a blow to Amparo Estaban, Rea's grandmother, that she was rushed to the hospital at 4 a.m. Sunday, said Tandra. She has since returned home. "And his mother keeps saying, 'I don't want to eat anything until my son comes home.' She's lying there in denial. She can't function." "I'm not feeling well," Estaban said, reached for comment Sunday. She could not answer any questions. Tandra said Rea loved skateboarding and was always surrounded by friends. "He wanted to be a mechanic and wanted to take care of this family, because he was the only male of the house," she said. "He was a very friendly kid. Everybody knew him. He had a very natural look on his face like he was smiling all the time."
Man, this shit has always amazes me! How in the hell do you get hit by a train? Don't you see it coming? Don't you hear the train honking the horn? What about all the flashing lights from the warning signs?
Stuff like this happens. People that don't learn from it become victims themselves; it helps clear out the gene pool.
I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out. I just hope we weren't supposed to have big bleeding hearts over this; e-thug internet shenanigans would transpire.
Can't say as I've ever been on the West Coast....Vegas was closest I guess and that was four years ago.
Time travel? Holy crap, this kid was John Conner...and Scott was that dude who played the T-1000.... ...creepy.
LMFAO! Yea, I was thinking the same thing about us having open hearts here. LOCO, maybe you can shed some light on how people can be so stupid as to get run over by a train. Is there some Bermuda Triangle occurrence going on when people step/drive near a train track? John Connor: I need a minute here. You're telling me that this thing can imitate anything it touches? The Terminator: Anything it samples by physical contact. John Connor: Get real, like it could disguise itself as a pack of cigarettes? The Terminator: No, only an object of equal size. John Connor: Why doesnt it become a bomb or something to get me? The Terminator: It cant form complex machines, guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts, it doesn't work that way, but it can form solid metal shapes. John Connor: Like what? The Terminator: Knives and stabbing weapons. John Connor: You just can't go around killing people. The Terminator: Why? John Connor: What do you mean why? 'Cause you can't. The Terminator: Why? John Connor: Because you just can't, OK? Trust me on this. My favorite part of that movies was when John Connor and Butt-nik(salute your shorts)robbed that ATM with the Atari or whatever that was. He was so 31337! LOL @ that pdf..
Trains are too big to play chicken with... I wish one of his friends he was showing off to had had the brains and foresight to film him.... then we could all have a good laugh at an idiot getting instant payback for inconveniencing people for hours.
Yea, that would have been a huge "hit" on Youtube, eh varnull? - no pun intended! All this talk about "Train Wreck"'s makes me want to smoke... Train Wreck
Looking at a thread about a death, and seeing these responses, really brightens my day, for some reason. Hope you all are well. ^.^
I hope you learned from his mistake. Carry that lesson with you through life, and use it as an example in all your actions. You'll be a better person for it. *edit* Remember that the internet is no place for serious business, and you should never come online looking for sympathy or pity, because sick bastards like Julia, Scott, and myself inhabit it like AIDS in Magic Johnson, circa 1991. *re-edit* You're 26 and one of your best friends was 15? Either you rode the short bus in school or I smell bullshit.
It's sheer stupidity, laziness, impatience and not paying attention to what you are doing. The same things that cause regular accidents of any kind. When I hired on the railroad we had a town that we went through and probably had one grade crossing accident per week or at least a couple times a month. The speed limit through that town was, at that time 15 mph, due to the volume of traffic in the area. Our mainline track ran through the center of town, parallel with the main throroughfare and across the street from a college. There are about 12 crossings in about a quarter of a mile, one of which is 4 lanes wide. That is alot of traffic, but going 15 mph actually made it worse because the people of the town saw the train coming so slow that they thought they had enough time to beat it across. Luckily because the speed was so slow no one was usually injured. They have raised the speed limit of trains to track speed which is 49 mph and since doing to the amount of grade crossing accidents had dropped in that area to around 4-5 a year. Most of the pedestrian fatalities are drunks who either a. fall asleep on the tracks or b. stumble in front of the train and c. regular people tired of waiting on the train to move and decide to cross between the cars and then fall between the cars onto the track when the train moves. Accidents like the one in the news story above are probably few and far between. Moral of the story is trains kill. They are big and unweilding and you really should respect all the advanced warning syttems that are in place.
Or he lied about his age, maybe? Anyway, after all is said and done, if you can't be a good example, you might as well be a fantastic warning.
