Blood on the tracks: SEPTA copes with rise in rail deaths

BURNETT "Bernie" Jones, a first responder to dozens of rail deaths since he became SEPTA's chief accident investigator in 2004, has learned to deal with the blood splatter and the body parts.

"The deaths that are the most heartbreaking to me are the ones where a person intentionally beheaded themselves, where a person was so distraught that they actually put their head on the rail and waited for the train," Jones said.

"The body is more intact in those cases, but just knowing that in their mind they had to do that . . . "

Of the accidental deaths, Jones said, "What's heavy on my heart is when they're a child in their teenage years and they make a mistake that costs their lives."

From 2003 to 2012, 111 people died on SEPTA rails. Seventy-four died on the regional-rail system, 27 on the subways and 10 on trolley lines - 41 were confirmed suicides.

So far this year, there have been eight rail deaths, including two suicides, compared with six in the first quarter of 2012.

But from New Year's Day to mid-February, Jones was the busiest man at SEPTA, investigating five rail deaths in six weeks. Only one died on the rails in the same period in 2012.

"These incidents can be cyclical," said Scott Sauer, SEPTA's director of system safety.

There was no single cause for the unusual rash of early-2013 fatalities, he said, adding that the transit agency conducts informational "safety blitzes" throughout the year at stations that are known rail-trespassing hotbeds - including Overbrook, Fern Rock, Bristol and Stenton - warning people that they are risking death every time they walk on the tracks.

A rail-death scene is tough to take.

"We see some really gruesome sights," said Jones. "We are human beings, we have feelings, and when you see a mangled body, it can be hurtful."

But like the local police officers at the scene, Jones said he and his nine SEPTA safety officers are able to put personal feelings aside and focus on methodically photographing and measuring evidence.

"We look at blood splatter to let us know where the initial impact was made," he said. "We look at rail markings such as scratches or gouge marks that are indications of braking. We look at body location - which way the head is facing, which way the feet are facing.

"Sometimes the train comes up behind the person, who is not expecting it on that track. Trains can run on any track at any time. That's railroad, period."

That's what Jones believes happened to Emmanuel Henderson, 20, who was fatally struck by a Doylestown-bound express train as it sped through North Hills Station in Montgomery County at 6:15 p.m. Feb. 7.

According to Abington Township police, Henderson, who lived in nearby Ardsley, entered the westbound track area and tried to cross the fence separating it from the eastbound track. He was blocked by an eastbound train stopped at the station.

"When the victim saw the westbound train approaching," police reported, "he attempted to return to the platform, but was unable to do so in time and was struck by the westbound train."

A Silverliner V railcar weighs 73 tons. Typical trains number three (219 tons) to six (438 tons) railcars.

At 60 mph, a train is a heavy missile on rails that cannot be quickly stopped. Anything it hits will explode.

"People being struck by trains don't leave a lot of evidence behind," Sauer said.

Sauer said accidental rail deaths often happen to "people who live in a neighborhood and think they know when trains are coming and from which direction. I've seen everything from people's wedding photos to class pictures taken on the tracks.

"There's this love affair we have with the railroad," he said. "Unfortunately, it's not the place to take your wedding pictures. Trains can run on any track in any direction at any time. You should always expect a train."

Sauer said another misconception is that a trespasser will hear the train in time to escape death.

"Rails used to be in sticks, so when the wheels hit the joints, you'd hear the clackity-clack," he said. "Now, there are 1,400-foot strings of rail welded together, which eliminates the clackity-clack. You won't hear it in time."

Sauer said that when SEPTA conducts informational "safety blitzes" at stations where young people have been observed on the rails, "kids tell us that's just their way of walking home from school. When we tell them, 'Hey, you could be hit by a train,' they look at us like, 'What are you talking about? We walk this way every day and we haven't been hit yet.' "

The most recent rail death was Ryan Hoover, 21, of Bristol, Bucks County, who was killed by a Trenton-bound SEPTA train about 10:30 p.m. March 30 while crossing the rails south of Bristol station.

According to SEPTA, Hoover heard the train coming, but could not get off the rails fast enough.

Though Hoover's death was ruled as one of the many accidents on the SEPTA system, Jones said he is affected just as deeply by suicides, such as the 2009 subway death of a high-school student at the Susquehanna-Dauphin station on the Broad Street Line.

"He had just broken up with his girlfriend," Jones said. "These are the type of things we all go through as teenagers - your first love, your first breakup." But this teenager was talking with his friends about suicide.

"Several students tried to talk him out of it," Jones said. "But he broke away from his friends, ran down the platform, jumped into the track area and ran toward the train as it was coming into the station. His friends saw it all."

Suicidal rail deaths are reported less frequently than accidental ones, but they resonate just as powerfully with people close to the victim.

When Will Russell, 21, a computer programmer who graduated from and worked at the University of Pennsylvania, moved into John Ruffino's East Falls house, he seemed shy at first. But Russell soon became a welcome member of the four twentysomethings who lived there and hung out together over beers in the back yard or at the corner bar.

"Will was the youngest guy in the house, kind of like our little brother," Ruffino said. "He was very close with his mother and his two sisters. He liked reading philosophy - Hermann Hesse, [Arthur] Schopenhauer. We traded books for awhile. Then I stopped. His books were too dark for me."

Like his housemates, Ruffino said, Russell was into music, messing around on his keyboard, creating a computerized beat on a loop, then building a song on top of it - or playing Ruffino's guitar.

"He was very pleasant to live with," Ruffino said. "We would never have guessed he had a history of mental-health problems.

"A week before he killed himself," Ruffino said, "Will was having a smoke with neighbors on the front porch, when he suddenly went off on a bit of a rant about being disturbed that people from our generation didn't appreciate fine art and classical music.

"He walked off the porch and started toward the train tracks," Ruffino said. "When someone asked him where he was going, he came back to the porch."

But a week later, on March 2, 2012, after Ruffino had gone to bed and the other housemates had gone away for the weekend, Russell headed toward East Falls Station again.

Ruffino awoke the next morning, a Saturday, alone in the house and assumed Russell was visiting family in Lancaster County. Later, he heard neighborhood talk about a man who had died on the rails early that morning, but never thought it could be Russell.

By Sunday, Ruffino said, he was worried. He went into Russell's room and found a note - quotes from Schopenhauer, Hesse and Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the ominous words, "I have gone and done a deed." That's when Ruffino knew.

SEPTA reported that Russell was laying on the tracks just after midnight when he was killed by a Norristown-bound train near East Falls Station.

Ruffino made the most painful phone call of his life and told Russell's family.

"It was a shock to everybody," Ruffino said. "We were all in a weird daze."

Russell's family told Ruffino about Russell's history of mental illness and his vulnerability.

This year, on the anniversary of Russell's death, Ruffino and his housemates went to the site and toasted their departed friend.

"We smoked a couple of cigarettes, because we had smoked with Will," Ruffino said. "We spread some coffee he had left behind over the site and drank some Virginia Gentleman bourbon, because that was the last drink I had with him."

SEPTA has more than 300 miles of railway, much of it open, so preventing suicides is impossible.

But the transit agency is trying to prevent accidental rail deaths by targeting its safety-blitz information campaigns to known trespassing areas, including regional-rail stations at Overbrook, Fern Rock, North Hills, Ambler, Malvern, Bristol and Stenton.

The more people who understand that a train can run on any track from any direction at any time, Sauer said, the fewer will die on the rails.

"A train death is something I wouldn't wish on anyone."