Train and Car Collide

EFLAND -- Safety equipment intended to protect motorists from oncoming trains has been malfunctioning for years, residents and workers of this small town said following Tuesday morning's double fatality at the railroad crossing where Forrest and Mount Willing roads intersect.

"A lot of times they're down and people just go around them because they bounce up and down all the time," said Sherry Utsman of Efland, who was filling orders at Missy's Grill just down the street from the collision scene. "People pay attention to the cross arms, but they get comfortable to it being broke and they just go around it."

"I see people up there working on them, but I don't know if they can't fix them or what's going on with it because it happens often," Utsman said.

"I've been living here at least 11 years and they mess up all the time," said Christopher Thompson of Efland, who was also on duty at Missy's Grill. "The lights will blink sometimes, and sometimes the arms come down" even though there is no train coming.

"I've been there, too, when you just have to guess and go" whether a train is coming because the cross-arms are acting up, Thompson said.

"I'm actually trying to look into that right now," Tracy Connell, a Washington, D.C.-based Amtrak spokeswoman, said Tuesday afternoon of the cross-arms at the railroad crossing. "That will be part of the investigation, to determine if they were functioning properly."

Erin Brett Lindsay-Calkins, 26, of 104 Virginia Lee Lane, which is off High Rock Road several miles northwest of Efland, and her 5-year-old son, Nicholas Aden Lindsay, were killed in the collision with Amtrak's Carolinian 80 passenger train at 10:24 a.m. Four-month-old Avan Brooke Lindsay was transported to UNC Hospitals.

"I heard the train whistle, then I heard KA-BOOM," said Gerald Cates, owner of the nearby Power Solutions, a business that sells and services residential and commercial generators throughout North Carolina.

"I jumped in my truck and pulled over. Nobody was moving. Even the onlookers were stunned," Cates said.

"I was afraid that car was going to catch fire," he said. "I took my pocket knife and cut her [Lindsay-Calkins'] seat belt out. . . If the car had caught on fire, I would have pulled the lady out."

"It didn't look good" for the baby, who he cut out of its baby seat, he said.

"It tore me up. That child tore me up," Cates said. The baby was "semi-conscious. It wasn't crying. It didn't look like it was doing too well" and "had a knot on its head."

Tom Hughes, a spokesman for N.C. Memorial Hospital, said Tuesday evening that the infant was in "fair" condition. Updates on the child's condition will be posted at www.twitter.com/unc_health_care online.

"Nobody knew, 15 minutes later, there was another child up there. They found him about 100 feet up" from the accident scene, lying on the side of the tracks, Cates said of Nicholas Lindsay, who was ejected upon impact.

"We saw it when we heard the crash, and the car was up in the air. I told Gail to call 911," said Connie Thompson, who works at The House Doctor with Gail Emory and can look directly from windows in their work areas to the intersection about 20 yards away.

"We talk about this every week," Thompson said of the malfunctioning cross-arms and the inevitability that a crash would occur. "It's almost weekly" that big trucks and tractor-trailers come through the intersection and run into the posts and sensors on the cross-arms, causing them to go haywire.

"The traffic is so heavy, you wouldn't believe it for this little town," Thompson said.

"It's just a throughway for so many" to get to I-85, to Hillsborough or points north, said Thompson, who was struggling to concentrate on her work after seeing the crash and its aftermath.

"That baby was just covered with blood, [her] mother's blood. I can't get that image out of my mind," Thompson said.

"I've really expected a derailment, they hit somebody and a car gets derailed," Emory said.

Like Thompson, she said she was still shaken by the death of the woman and her son.

"It's just a sad, tragic thing," Emory said.

From Herald Sun