MAY 12, 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
An 11-year-old boy was hit and killed by a San Francisco
Municipal Transit light rail vehicle in the Outer Mission District Tuesday.
The accident was reported just before 9 a.m. at the
intersection of Lake View Ave and San Jose Ave., according to Mindy Talmadge of
the San Francisco Fire Department, who confirmed that the child had died.
Jay Hader, who works at a nearby corner store, witnessed the
boy who was wearing a backpack run around an SUV.
“The M [Ocean View] just came and it was already moving and
it hit him and he got [dragged] underneath, so it’s just real sad,” he said.
The boy whose name has not been released, lives in the
neighborhood and his mother was nearby when the accident happened.
Muni reports service disruptions in the area:
ATTN: #Moceanview turning
back outbound/inbound at Broad & Plymouth due to collision. Updates to
follow.
— SFMTA (@sfmta_muni) May 12, 2015
“Oh she was hysterical,” Hader said. “She was trying to move
the train. She was trying to pull the kid from under the train. She just lost
it. And we’re trying to get somebody to get here. They got here about 10
minutes after the whole thing happened.
The coroner is at the scene where the body remains under the
train. San Jose remains closed for several blocks. Motorists are advised to
avoid the area.
//------------------------///
A 12-year-old boy was fatally struck Tuesday morning by a
Muni train in San Francisco - killed by the train that he was trying to hop on
to get a ride to school, a witness said.
Neighbor Jay Hayter told NBC Bay Area that the boy was
running across the street on the way to school about 8:30 a.m. and was trying
to avoid an oncoming SUV in the Ingelside neighborhood of Lakeview and San Jose
Avenue.
Because the SUV was in the boy's path, Hayter
said: "He just got run over by the train, pulled underneath. He
didn't see the train."
The boy's mother or aunt were "hysterical," Hayter
said, and tried to pull him out from underneath the train. People nearby told
them to stop, there was nothing they could do.
"I have no words," Hayter said.
"It's a child."
The boy's age was not immediately clear. Firefighters first
said the boy was 12, and police said the boy was 11. Witnesses said he attended
Aptos Middle School.
Emergency personnel worked around the scene, blocked off
with yellow tape. Near the train, women were crying and a man sat on the stoop
dialing his cell phone and breaking out into tears.
Hayter said he thinks the area needs a stop sign or a stop
light because "people get hit all the time."
"It's tragic," he said.