Two Killed by Metrolink Train in Mission Viejo - UPDATED

UPDATED:  The deceased have been identified as Anastasia Bolton (17) from Del Mar, and Daniel Akins (22) from Mission Viejo.  The survivor was identified as Silvia Lua (27) of Santa Ana.  Photos of Bolton and Akins can be found here.

UPDATE 9/10 - More details on how these three ended up on the tracks (from The OC Register):

"We were just doing an adventure type thing," Lua told a dispatcher.
As she tries to tell a dispatcher where she is, she goes down the sequence of events, trying to understand what happened.

Click here to listen to a recording of part of the 911 call.

Officials said the three walked down to the tracks and talked in the dark. The three then laid down on the steel tracks.

"I don't know where I'm at," Lua told the dispatcher. "I was with my friends and we were laying on the train tracks and I passed out, and I, the train tracks passed by me and I got up and it hit my arm."

Lua tries to tell the dispatcher where she is, but she is lost.

"I was tired and we passed out, and right now I just woke up because the train tracks, the train passed," Lua explains. "The train passed and it woke me up, and when I woke up and I got up and I guess, it hit my arm and my leg."

Lua tries to explain that she was not alone near the tracks but now she doesn't know where her friends are.

"Anna?" Lua is heard on the 911 tape, looking for her friend. "I don't know where they went. Her phone's with me, but I don't know where they went."

When deputies arrived, shoes and articles of clothing littered a 700-foot area around the tracks.

Lua told investigators the three did not drink at the bar where they met up, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.

Lua is still being treated for moderate injuries she suffered when she was hit by the train.
Amormino said Lua is believed to have laid perpendicular to the tracks and got up just seconds before the train sped through. Bolton and Akins are believed to have laid down inside the tracks.

Why the friends decided to walk down to the tracks is unknown, Amormino said.

I hate to say it, but this whole thing is starting to sound like Darwin Awards material.

This accident that took place almost within sight of my house.  The OC Register has the story here.  I met a couple of their photographers at the scene.  The updated Register story has this:

A woman and two friends fell asleep near the tracks of a Metrolink train early Thursday morning after going drinking at a Santa Ana bar, the lone survivor told deputies after she was struck by a train.

Two people, a man and a woman, were struck and killed by a train headed for Los Angeles Thursday morning, but a third person survived the deadly ordeal after jumping out of the way of the speeding train, officials said. She told deputies she heard the horn of the oncoming train and jumped out of the way, but was still hit in the arms and legs as the train sped through.

Her two friends were killed in the collision.

UPDATE:  We're getting a little more information about the victims.  From the OC Register:

The survivor, a 27-year-old woman from Santa Ana, told investigators that she had gotten to know the deceased woman, who the Orange County Coroner's office described as a 17-year-old from Del Mar, through Facebook and ended up meeting her and a man in person for the first time hours before the accident, Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. Authorities have not released their names.


The two women and the 22-year-old man from Mission Viejo met at Proof, a bar in Santa Ana, before driving south to walk along the shore in Laguna Beach and finally heading to Mission Viejo, where they planned to meet a friend they could stay with until morning, Amormino said.


When they were unable to reach their friend, the three ended up parked at the Gateway shopping center at Via Fabricante and Alicia Parkway.

The earlier story had other information about the incident.

Two teenagers were killed and a third was injured after they were hit by a Metrolink train headed for Los Angeles early Thursday morning, officials said.

Officials said they are still investigating why the teenagers were near the tracks early Thursday morning, an area that is easily accessible by foot but cordoned off by fences. But at least one resident whose home neighbors the tracks said he heard laughing and screaming near the tracks late Wednesday morning.

Deputies with the Orange County Sheriff's Department received a 911 call of the incident at 6:15 a.m., when a girl called and said she had been hit by the train.

"She was able to talk to us," said Lt. Jim England.

When the girl called officials, she said she had been hit by a train, but she seemed to be unaware of what happened to her two friends, England said. Officials originally said the two deceased teenagers were both male, but later confirmed the two minors were male and female.

Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department said the girl suffered moderate injuries to her arms and legs, but the injuries were not life-threatening. She was taken to a local hospital to be treated.

Paramedics responded to Alicia Parkway and Via Fabricante, where the girl said she was struck, England said. It wasn't until deputies arrived that she began asking about her two friends.

Deputies searched the area and found the bodies of the two teenagers, who had also been hit by the train, England said.

More updates at the bottom of the post.

I heard the dispatch on the Orange County Fire radio at about 6:15 and also saw a Twitter posting from Metrolink saying their train was stopped north of Laguna Niguel due to "mechanical issues".  That train came to a stop about a mile north of the accident scene where the tracks cross under Alicia Parkway (the same location where I shot some of this train footage a few months ago).

Trains often come through here at speeds of 50-60 mph and are surprisingly quiet.  They're on you before you realize they're there, especially if they're running cab forward with the locomotive in the rear pushing the train.  From this particular spot you can look over a quarter mile south along the tracks and could easily see a northbound train coming, but if you were facing away you might not hear them until it's too late.  My son took this photo a few months ago as a steam train was heading north up the grade at this location.

I live just south of where this happened and after hearing the radio traffic walked down and took some photos.  Two photographers from the OC Register were already on scene but no other media had arrived yet.

Officers confer before the deputy with the tarps headed down the tracks to cover the bodies.

More of the responding units.  This is also the approximate point of the collision.

The bodies were located on the north side of the bridge.  A helicopter shot on TV showed another tarp under the bridge out of my view.  There were only two fatalities but when people are hit by moving trains they rarely end up intact.  This isn't the first train accident we've had in this area.

This officer had the sad task of covering the remains.  He doesn't get paid enough, that's for sure.

The same officer as he walks back under the bridge.  If you look closely in the lower right hand part of the picture you'll see a blue tennis show that belonged to one of the victims.  I also saw a pink and blue jacket on the other side of the bridge that probably belonged to one of the females.

A group of investigators gathered on the south side of Alicia Parkway.

UPDATE:  ABC7 is reporting the teens may have fallen asleep on the tracks.  The surviving teen said she heard the train coming and moved to jump out of the way but was still struck by a portion of the train.  The train was moving at 90 mph when it came through the scene.  The train was operating cab forward, meaning the locomotive was at the rear and was pushing the train, making it harder to hear for someone down on the tracks - especially if they were asleep.  There is a report that one of the victims may be a student at Mission Viejo High, and the other two could be visitors from outside the area.  More later.

UPDATE:  From the OC Register:

Angela Starr, spokeswoman for Metrolink said the engineer of the train noticed something on the tracks and sounded a horn, but they remained in the way.

At 6:15 it was still fairly dark out, and even if the engineer had gotten a clear view of the kids on the track he couldn't have stopped the train in the space he had available.

UPDATE:  I'm getting lots of hits from Google searches on this story and I'm still amazed when I see one like this:

why didn't the train stop when it saw something on the tracks in Mission Viejo?

Didn't do well in physics, did you.  The train did stop - about a mile from where the people were hit because that's as fast as a 90 mph train could stop.

I always feel sorry for the train crew in these situations.  There wasn't a thing the engineer could do but hit the emergency stop and stand on the horn.  He was helpless as the whole thing unfolded right in front of him.  Being in a cab car only makes it worse because there's very little train in front of the engineer and he would have had a gruesome view of the whole thing.

During a trip up to Hollywood I snapped a photo of a Metrolink cab car as the train was coming into Union Station.  The engineer can be seen sitting in the window at the left.