A seven year-old child in Chillhowie, Virginia (VA) survived an oncoming train by lying under the rails, but his grandfather and sister were killed.
According to police in Chilhowie, Louis Perry, 52 and Nevaeh Fields, 6, were killed when the train slammed into them as they were fishing from a railroad trestle June 30. The boy was with them but he told the police that he lived by hanging from the railroad ties on the edge of the trestle as the train went overhead.
Police officers from the Smyth County Sheriff’s Office rushed to the scene after the accident. There was a brief search for the surviving child, who went to his grandparents’ house after the accident.
The engineer on the train from Norfolk and Southern Railroad said he saw the child at the scene but did not see where he went. The police found a child’s pair of blue jeans about 400 feet from the trestle, and they followed a train through a tunnel under a nearby road and found him in a field.
The engineer told the police that he blasted the train’s horn and slammed on the emergency brakes but he could not stop in time.