ALLMAN FILMMAKERS TO STAND TRIAL IN FATAL SAVANNAH, GEORGIA TRAIN CRASH. CSX TRANSPORTATION SAID IT TWICE DENIED THE FILMMAKERS PERMISSION TO SHOOT FOOTAGE ON ITS TRACKS IN RURAL SOUTHEAST GEORGIA

MARCH 7, 2015

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA (AP)

Randall Miller had just begun shooting the Gregg Allman biographical movie "Midnight Rider" when the production turned into a nightmare - a freight train traveling 55 mph plowed into the director's crew on a Georgia railroad bridge, injuring six film workers and killing a young camera assistant.

A year later, Miller is scheduled to stand trial along with his business partner wife and the movie's executive producer in a rare case of filmmakers being prosecuted for deaths on their sets.  A jury in rural Wayne County will have to decide if the train collision that killed 27-year-old Sarah Jones was an accident or the result of a criminal act. And if a crime occurred, which of the defendants, if any, should take the blame?

"It may be difficult for the prosecutor to sort out exactly who is responsible," said Ron Carlson, a law professor emeritus at the University of Georgia who specializes in criminal law.

Miller, his wife Jody Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish face up to 11 years in a Georgia prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing. They have all pleaded not guilty.

CSX Transportation, the railroad company that owns the bridge where the crash occurred, has said it twice denied the filmmakers permission to shoot footage on its tracks in rural southeast Georgia. Under state law, someone can be convicted of involuntary manslaughter for committing a misdemeanor - in this case trespassing - that unintentionally causes another person to be killed.

Jury selection is scheduled to start Monday morning in Wayne County Superior Court, about 70 miles southwest of Savannah. The judge has set aside a week for the trial.

It was the first day of shooting on "Midnight Rider" when Miller and his crew stepped onto the railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River on Feb. 20, 2014. Actor William Hurt was on the set in his role as the Allman Brothers Band singer in his later years. A metal-framed bed was pulled across the tracks as a prop. When the train struck, it smashed the bed and hurled metal fragments at the fleeing crew.

The fast-moving train struck and killed Jones, a young camera assistant from Atlanta who had worked on TV series including "Army Wives" and "The Vampire Diaries." Her death galvanized behind-the-scenes film workers nationwide to push for improved safety standards on sets.

A sobbing Miller called Jones' parents to tell them she was dead. The director, whose previous films included "Bottle Shock" and "CBGB," testified last May in a related civil case that he had been told only two trains a day crossed the bridge and he only set out with his crew onto the trestle after a pair of trains had passed. Asked if the crew had obtained permission from the railroad to film on its tracks, Miller said that wasn't his job. But he bristled at the suggestion he recklessly put his crew in danger.

"I was in the middle of the track and I almost died," Miller said in civil court May 12.

Carlson, the law professor, said he expects Miller's attorneys will try to persuade the jury that "this was a mistake but it was an innocent mistake."

"He wasn't sending other people into a place where he thought it was dangerous to go and that was evidenced by his own presence there," Carlson said.

A fourth "Midnight Rider" defendant, assistant director Hillary Schwartz, has also been charged but prosecutors plan to try to her separately. That means she could be called as a witness to testify against the others.

The last high-profile prosecution of a filmmaker in an on-set death occurred after a helicopter crash killed actor Victor Morrow and two children during filming of the "Twilight Zone" movie in 1982. Five years later, director John Landis and four others stood trial on manslaughter charges. A jury acquitted them all.

In March 2011, a stunt coordinator on the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" was cleared by a British jury in the death of a camera man killed in an on-set vehicle crash.

The "Midnight Rider" movie has been in limbo since the Georgia train crash. Allman sued Miller to prevent the director from reviving the film. They settled out of court last year and terms were not disclosed.

//---------------------------//

CSX: Film crew denied track access before crash

AP News | Sep 03, 2014

 

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP)

CSX Transportation twice denied producers of a biographical movie about singer Gregg Allman permission to shoot on its railroad tracks before a freight train slammed into the film's crew in south Georgia, killing one worker and injuring six, the company said in court documents.

Legal filings in Chatham County State Court mark the first time Florida-based railroad operator CSX has made any publicly available statement about the Feb. 20 crash involving one of its trains and the crew of the movie "Midnight Rider." Lawsuits have been filed against CSX and the film's producers by the parents of Sarah Jones, a camera assistant killed in the collision, and two injured crew members. Director Randall Miller and two other top executives on the production have also been indicted on criminal charges.

In its response Tuesday to the Jones family's lawsuit, attorneys for CSX denied the company was negligent or otherwise responsible for the crash that killed her. The film workers, including actor William Hurt in the role of the Allman Brothers Band singer, was shooting on a railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River in rural Wayne County when a train traveling 55 mph plowed through them and a hospital bed placed on the tracks as a prop.

The railroad company also sued the film's producers in the same court for trespassing. CSX Transportation said that days before the crash the filmmakers twice asked for permission to shoot on its train tracks and the company "unequivocally denied each request in writing, citing a company policy which prohibits filming on CSXT's property due to safety and security reasons."

The lawsuit said filmmakers decided to trespass onto the railroad's property "despite knowing that CSXT had twice, in writing, denied them permission."

Matt Stone, an attorney for Miller and the director's wife and business partner, Jody Savin, declined to comment Wednesday. So did William Hunter, an attorney for "Midnight Rider" executive producer Jay Sedrish. All three are named as defendants in CSX's lawsuit, along with Miller and Savin's production company, Unclaimed Freight Productions. Prosecutors charged Miller, Savin and Sedrish with involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing.

In a prepared statement July 17, Miller and Savin said the crash and Jones' death "will haunt us forever" and insisted that "we would never knowingly or intentionally put anybody's safety at risk."

Sheriff's investigators have previously said the film producers were denied access to the railroad tracks by CSX, but had permission to be on surrounding property owned by Rayonier, the forest-products manufacturer that has a nearby mill.

The Jones family's lawsuit says CSX should have taken precautions because it knew the film crew planned to shoot in the area and operators of two passing trains saw the workers before the crash. CSX said its operators saw "unidentified persons" in the area "but not on or immediately near" the tracks.

CSX also said 27-year-old Jones was partly to blame for her own death because she "failed to exercise ordinary and responsible care for her own safety." A spokeswoman for the family did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

//----------------------------------//

DIRECTOR, 2 MORE INDICTED IN FATAL GA. TRAIN CRASH

Russ Bynum Associated Press

Posted:   07/03/2014 09:05:03 AM MDT

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — The director of a movie about singer Gregg Allman and two other executives on the project were indicted Thursday on felony charges stemming from a fatal crash in which a freight train plowed into the film's crew in southeast Georgia.

A grand jury in rural Wayne County returned charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing against "Midnight Rider" director Randall Miller as well as his wife and business partner, Jody Savin, and the film's executive producer, Jay Sedrish.

If they are convicted, the filmmakers each could face up to 11 years in prison for the Feb. 20 death of Sarah Jones. The 27-year-old camera assistant from Atlanta was killed and six other crew members were struck by a train while shooting footage on a railroad bridge spanning the Altamaha River southwest of Savannah. Authorities say the train was traveling at 55 mph when it crashed into the crew and a bed that had been placed on the tracks as a movie prop.

Jones' parents, who have filed a civil lawsuit against the three indicted filmmakers and others, stopped short of praising the decision to seek a criminal prosecution.

"Elizabeth and I are comfortable that the authorities were both careful and meticulous in investigating and bringing charges related to the incident that took our daughter's life," Richard Jones, the young woman's father, said in a statement. "We must allow the criminal justice process to proceed unhindered. Our mission remains the same: to ensure safety on all film sets."

Wayne County sheriff's investigators have said filmmakers had permission to be on property surrounding the tracks from the landowner, forest-products company Rayonier, but lacked permission from CSX Railroad to be filming on the actual train tracks.

The indictment charges Miller, Savin and Sedrish with unintentionally causing Jones' death by trespassing onto the railroad bridge. The filmmakers went onto the train trestle even after CSX denied them access, the indictment says.

Donnie Dixon, an attorney for Miller and Savin, said Thursday that he had no comment on the charges. It was not immediately known whether Sedrish had an attorney.

Three civil lawsuits, including the one by Jones' parents, related to the train crash are pending. Miller bristled at the suggestion that he was cavalier about his crew's safety when he took the witness stand during a court appearance in May. He said his assistants were in charge of securing location permits, and that crew members were along the track to look out for trains during filming.

"I did not know it was a live train trestle," Miller said. "We were told there were two trains from Rayonier coming through, and no more trains that day."

Involuntary manslaughter is a felony carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison under Georgia law. Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by no more than a year in prison.

None of the accused filmmakers, who live in California, have been arrested. They will likely be allowed to travel to Georgia and turn themselves in at a later date, said Joe Gardner, the lead sheriff's investigator in the case

//---------------------------------------//

OSHA CITES ALLMAN FILM COMPANY IN GA. TRAIN CRASH

Posted: Aug 14, 2014 6:34 PM EST

SAVANNAH,GEORGIA (AP)

A production company formed to make a biographical film about singer Greg Allman was cited by federal regulators Thursday for workplace safety violations stemming from a train crash in rural Georgia that killed a camera assistant and injured six others.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration proposed $74,900 in fines against Film Allman LLC, a company incorporated in 2013 to make the movie "Midnight Rider." The company was cited for two safety violations saying it willfully put workers in danger of being struck by a live train and put them at risk of falling off a railroad bridge where they were shooting a scene.

Filming had just begun on "Midnight Rider" when a freight train plowed into the crew Feb. 20 on a railroad trestle spanning the Altamaha River in rural Wayne County southwest of Savannah. The collision killed 27-year-old Sarah Jones. Investigators say fellow crew members were injured either by the train itself or flying shrapnel from a bed that had been placed across the tracks as a movie prop.

"It is unacceptable that Film Allman LLC knowingly exposed their crew to moving trains while filming on a live track and railroad trestle," David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads OSHA, said in a statement.

The citations don't name any individual officers associated with Film Allman LLC. The company's incorporation papers list the same Pasadena, California, address as Unclaimed Freight Productions, which is owned by "Midnight Rider" director Randall Miller and his wife, Jody Savin. Their attorney, Don Samuel, declined to comment.

Film Allman has 15 business days to contest OSHA's findings and proposed penalty.

On July 3, a grand jury indicted Miller, Savin and executive producer Jay Sedrish on charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing in connection with the crash. Sheriff's investigators say the filmmakers took their crew onto the railroad bridge despite being denied permission to film there by CSX railroad. All three defendants have pleaded not guilty.

In a statement released through their attorney July 17, Miller and Savin said the crash and Jones' death "will haunt us forever" but they insisted they had committed no crimes.

"We would never knowingly or intentionally put anybody's safety at risk," Miller and Savin's statement said. "This was a horrible tragedy and a horrific accident."

Production on "Midnight Rider" was halted after the crash. Allman filed a civil lawsuit against Miller and Savin seeking to prevent them from restarting the project. They settled out of court without disclosing terms

//-------------------------------------//

A TRAIN, A NARROW TRESTLE AND 60 SECONDS TO ESCAPE: HOW 'MIDNIGHT RIDER' VICTIM SARAH JONES LOST HER LIFE

The Feb. 20 death of 27-year-old camera assistant Sarah Jones on the set of Midnight Rider outside Doctortown, Ga., spread grief and anger through Hollywood. It has led to an industrywide reckoning on safety standards and inspired some Oscars attendees to wear black ribbons on their lapels in her memory. Many of the details of the accident remain murky and unknown. But now a THR reconstruction, based on an exclusive eyewitness account and interviews with Jones’ parents and others, reveals harrowing new details of what happened when a 20-person film crew tried to shoot a scene on a live train track.

Joyce Gilliard, a 42-year-old hairstylist working on Midnight Rider, an indie biopic about Gregg Allman featuring William Hurt as the 1970s rocker, began feeling anxious about the shoot from the moment she arrived at the 110-year-old bridge trestle over the Altamaha River in Wayne County, a wild, untamed land full of rivers, Spanish moss and gnats. “As soon as I got to the location, I started to feel funny,” she said during a series of interviews. “It didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel safe there.”

The 110-year-old bridge over the Altamaha River, Wayne County, Ga. 

Jones, already known in the local production community as an indefatigable worker with a cheery disposition, apparently didn’t reveal any concerns to co-workers. But her father, Richard Jones, says that in a phone conversation the night before she died, his daughter told him she was “nervous about a few things.” He says, “She was a little bit surprised about it being low-budget. … She made a comment that some of the people asking her questions should have known more than her, and she thought that was odd.” The day she died, says her father, was her first on the set. 

As a barefoot Hurt paced, rehearsing his lines, Gilliard watched nervously. She was responsible for the actor’s hair, and as the wind picked up, she darted in and out of shots before retreating behind the cameras, where she traded small talk with Jones.

As the day wore on, director Randall Miller moved the shoot from the land beside the river onto the narrow gridwork of the trestle itself, which extends over the edge of the Altamaha. The trestle’s wood and metal bottom was covered with pebbles and had gaping holes in some places. The blustery wind rang through the girders, making it hard to stay steady, says Gilliard.

From shore, several dozen yards away, a voice shouted to the crew that in the event a train appeared, everyone would have 60 seconds to clear the tracks. “Everybody on the crew was tripping over that,” says Gilliard. “A minute? Are you serious?” By now, she and two other crewmembers were nervous enough that before shooting, they gathered in an informal prayer circle. “Lord, please protect us on these tracks,” murmured Gilliard. “Surround us with your angels and help us, Lord.”

While Gilliard prayed, Jones helped load film, monitor the cameras and transport gear. A fresh-faced South Carolinian with a passion for travel and books, Jones wasn’t really the type to fret much. The crew was filming a dream sequence, and they had placed a twin-size metal-framed bed and mattress in the middle of the tracks. Then, Gilliard looked up and saw a light in the distance, followed by the immense howl of a locomotive. It was a train — and it was hurtling toward them.

Two stories high, screaming with the sound of a blast horn and possibly brakes, the train was nearly as wide as the trestle. Gilliard says Miller yelled at everyone to run. Jones, several bags slung over each shoulder, shouted something about what to do with the expensive camera equipment. “Drop it!” Gilliard and others yelled. “Just drop it!”

The only viable escape route to the closest shore lay in running toward the approaching train, now traveling, by one estimate, at almost 60 mph. Gilliard tried to make her way onto the metal gangplank parallel to the tracks. Miller and another crewmember began tugging at the bed, trying to remove it from the train’s path, fearing it might cause a derailment. But as the train approached, Gilliard says, they abandoned their efforts.

Before Gilliard knew it, the train was upon her. She found herself clinging to one of the girders. But the blast of pressure and wind from the train’s passing ripped Gilliard’s left arm away from her body and straight into the train. It snapped like a stick. With one hand still on the girder, Gilliard looked down and saw bone sticking out of her sweater. And then she saw blood. She grabbed a sheet that had come loose from the mattress and wrapped her bleeding arm inside it. With the train howling past just inches behind her, Gilliard threw herself onto two metal wires that stretched between the girders and along the gangplank, thrust her head out over the river below and shut her eyes. “I saw my life, my kids, my family, all of it before me,” she says. “I was sure I was going to die.”

One of the first things she saw when she opened her eyes again was a lifeless Jones, her body and face mangled. Like Gilliard, Jones had tried to find shelter on the gangplank. But when the train hit the bed and mattress, it sent debris flying. Something may have hit Jones, possibly propelling her into the train’s path. In the melee, Miller also fell on the tracks. A still photographer nearby managed to pull him away just in time. He was sobbing, Gilliard says, trying to cope with the disaster. Hurt also survived unscathed. The traumatized crew helped collect Jones’ body. A team of paramedics arrived within 20 minutes, and a helicopter touched down shortly after.

Within an hour after the incident, Gilliard was airlifted to a Savannah hospital to be treated for a compound fracture in her arm and other injuries. Five other crewmembers also required medical care. A police investigation was opened, and federal officials soon were swarming the marshy countryside asking about permissions, permits, easements and the complex language of film contracts.

The multiple investigations since have widened to include the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Georgia law enforcement authorities are treating the investigation into Jones’ death as a negligent homicide, setting the stage for the biggest safety-related scandal to rock Hollywood in at least a decade.

The exact details of what precautions were — or were not — taken on the set that day and whether the production even had permission to film on the tracks are being sorted out. But in the days following the disaster, recriminations of shockingly lax safety protocols began to emerge.

“This was no accident,” says Ray Brown, president of the Motion Picture Studio Mechanics union local 479 in Atlanta and a Jones colleague, suggesting the incident was avoidable. “When I have done train work or around trains for smaller productions up to major blockbusters, there are always several railroad personnel there with their hard hats, glasses and radios, and I can’t imagine a more structured safety protocol even beyond airlines than the rail system.”

Jones’ parents are reluctant to cast blame until investigations are complete. A shaken Miller called them after the incident to express his condolences. “I don’t know myself really what part Randy Miller played in all of this, but he was very upset that day,” says Richard Jones. “He was saying he was so sorry.” Since then, the Joneses have heard nothing from top execs associated with the film.

Their daughter’s death prompted a tidal outpouring of grief and anger from around the world. The filmmaking team has received death threats (though executive producer Nick Gant, who was attacked on Facebook for appearing to have posted insensitive comments, is telling friends that his account was hacked and that he deleted the hacker's comments when he discovered them). By Sunday night, more than 60,000 had signed an online petition demanding that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences include Jones in its “In Memoriam” video segment. Instead, the Academy recognized her in an onscreen photo and caption just before it went to a commercial.

But for Gilliard and the other members of the crew that day, the death of Jones always will be inextricably linked to a lonely patch of Georgia railroad.

The day felt strange from the very beginning, says Gilliard. She and the rest of the crew had gathered at a studio in Savannah that morning, when they were told they’d be traveling to a location to shoot a “camera test.” The crew was quiet and reserved as they passed fields and railroad tracks, arriving about two hours later at the massive metal trestle that spans a portion of the Altamaha River.

CSX, the Florida-based railway company that owns the tracks, easement and trestle where Jones died, told the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office in the early hours of the investigation that it never granted Midnight Rider’s producers permission to film on the tracks in the first place.

“According to the CSX employee,” Sgt. Ben Robertson wrote in a report obtained by the media, “the production company had previously been denied permission to film on the trestle, and there was electronic correspondence to verify that fact.” Robertson’s report noted that a member of Miller’s crew, when asked whether permission was granted, replied, “It’s complicated.”

Miller, who has engaged noted Savannah defense attorney Donnie Dixon, declined through a New York public relations firm to provide specifics about what safety precautions were taken. Other senior managers on the film, including the line producer, first assistant director and location manager, did not respond to requests for comment. Lee Donaldson, a friend of Jones and a local Georgia union official, put it bluntly. “It’s not complicated; you either have permission or you don’t.”

Several Hollywood producers question whether there were shortcuts or oversights in the production. “Every train, every airplane, every airport, every shoot I’ve ever done, there’s always been a coordinator that you hire on your staff to coordinate it all, to communicate to crew, to any train operators, linemen, whatever,” says Harry Bring, a producer of one of the first television shows Jones worked on, Lifetime’s Army Wives. Gilliard says she saw no such officials. “It doesn’t seem like precautions and procedures, both legal and common sense, were taken,” adds Bring. “If they didn’t have permission to be on the tracks, why in the hell were they there?”

In addition to railway safety personnel monitoring the set, Brown, the Atlanta union official, says all crew and cast should have been provided with call sheets with detailed notes on safety. Gilliard claims no such call-sheet notes were provided and no evidence that they existed has emerged.

Ordinarily, producers say, a location shoot like this also would have included an on-site medic. But Gilliard recalls that when Hurt required a Band-Aid for a minor abrasion, he had to get one from a costume designer who happened to have one in her bag. “That’s when we all knew that there was no medic,” recalls Gilliard. In fact, she says, there was not one safety meeting for the shoot on the tracks that day.

According to one media report, Miller may have cut corners before. A local news station released a DVD made by Miller’s production company, Unclaimed Freight, in which crewmembers bragged about their “guerrilla style” filmmaking during the production of the 2013 movie CBGB, which included allowing a small child to roam in a field of cows and another scene in which a piano was dropped down a staircase. In the DVD, Miller says, “I don’t think it’s dangerous at all to have a little kid running with cows, do you think? No. No.”

Gilliard relaxed a little as the initial filming got underway. Two trains rumbled past without incident. When she and others asked whether any more trains were expected, the answer came back: a definitive “No.” The warm weather and camaraderie on the set was a pleasure. But when Miller directed everyone to move out onto the trestle, Gilliard’s stomach tightened once again. She was afraid of heights and never had learned to swim. Jones and Gilliard had worked together before, and Gilliard was happy to see the younger woman. A native of Columbia, S.C., now living in Atlanta, Jones was gifted with optimism, a knack for following instructions and a can-do attitude that endeared her to nearly everyone she encountered. As a kid, she swam and did gymnastics. Later, she attended a local technical college and became interested in the film industry during an internship on Army Wives. In her off time, she traveled.

“If she had a second off, she left the country, she had to see the world,” says one of her best friends, Amanda Etheridge. “She was unstoppable, always wanting to learn a new hobby, a new craft.” Bobby LaBonge, the director of photography for two seasons of Army Wives, says Jones had a disarming naivete. “You felt re-invigorated around her,” he says. “You saw the fresh wildness of making movies again, and you saw a sparkle in her that was fun.”

By her early 20s, Jones was making headway in an industry discipline overwhelmingly male, physically grueling and tough to sustain for very long: camerawork. LaBonge remembers her huffing with lots of gear, always smiling, never complaining. On the set, she was known as “The Ant” because of her ability to carry heavy objects that dwarfed her.

On March 2 in Jones’ hometown, nearly 900 people gathered in the Ashland United Methodist Church, where Jones spent many Sundays as a child. Her father sat down at the piano and began to play “Andy’s Song,” a tune about his own father he had composed and had played for Sarah only a few weeks before, when he found himself stranded in Atlanta by an epic snowstorm. It was the last time he saw her in person. The church filled with the sounds of weeping. As mourners began spilling out of the church, a common refrain was heard: “Never again.” Sarah, everyone agreed, would not die in vain.

Now, the global film industry is undergoing a widespread reckoning of what Jones’ death means. “This incident has rippled its devastation of people all the way to the top of our world,” says Brown. “We have a firm commitment that we will never forget. We will never let this happen again.”

The most high-profile case in which a director was criminally charged in an on-set death was the 1982 helicopter crash during the filming of Twilight Zone: The Movie that killed Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Chen. Director John Landis and his four co-defendants were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter after a lengthy 1987 trial, but the deaths did lead to significant improvements in production safety protocols.

Meanwhile, filming of Midnight Rider, which was to be distributed in the U.S. by Open Road Films, has been suspended indefinitely.

“Sarah was a strong, powerful, beautiful woman,” says Gilliard, who now will commit herself to the promotion of safety and welfare on sets. Doctors have told her she will never straighten her arm again. She has metal pins in her elbow, and she says she wakes up several times each night crying, with one horrible final image of Jones burned into her consciousness.

After Richard Jones and his daughter talked by phone the night before the shoot, the two exchanged texts. She expressed her excitement about working with Hurt, and then she was out of range, and their exchange ended. A few minutes later, at 7:57 p.m., he sent her one final text: “Lost you.”

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com