Landfill worker had bird's-eye view of crash

Josh McFadden, taking a methane-gas reading from a landfill Thursday near the site of a deadly car-train crash, had a bird's-eye view of the wreck that took the lives of five young people.
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He said he's scheduled to meet with an inspector today at that crossing in Canton.

From his perch Thursday — 75 to 100 feet up and at least 200 yards away — McFadden saw the railroad gates down and heard the train's horn blowing, he said.

Then he saw the car.

Driving toward the crossing, it slowed slightly behind an SUV waiting for the train to pass and then whipped around and headed for the tracks.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, is he going to try to beat this train?' ” McFadden said. “You can't beat an Amtrak.”

Witness says he often crosses same tracks

First came the familiar ding of the railroad crossing, then the loud horn from an oncoming train.

McFadden looked up from his job taking methane-gas readings from a landfill near the train tracks in Canton.

Standing 75, maybe 100 feet up, at least 200 yards away, McFadden saw the gates down at the crossing on Hannan Road and the lights on as an Amtrak train came barreling down the track Thursday.

A black Ford Fusion raced north on Hannan, he said, and seemed to slow abruptly behind an SUV waiting for the train to pass  —  and then quickly whipped around it.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, is he going to try to beat this train?' ” McFadden said Sunday, recalling the moment. “You can't beat an Amtrak.”

And Dan Broughton didn't.

The 19-year-old was killed — along with his friends Jessica Sadler, 14, of Wayne; her boyfriend, Eddie Gross, 17, of Taylor; Sean Harris, 19, of Taylor, and his brother Terrence Harris, 21, of Stafford, Va. — as the train crushed and crumpled the car, dragging it down the track toward Lotz Road.

Was view obscured?

“He just got impatient,” said McFadden, who lives in Livingston County. But, he said, Broughton may not have known the train charging at them was an Amtrak, since slow-moving freight trains also use those rails. Trees and brush could have obscured their view, said McFadden, who frequently crosses the tracks at Hannan.
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Today, McFadden said, he is scheduled to meet with an inspector at the railroad crossing, though he's not sure what questions he might be asked. He already has filled out a statement and gave it to railroad officials on Thursday.

His recount contradicts what at least one other witness said she remembers from the crash. Ashley Vaughn was driving south on Hannan with her husband, Dwayne, when the crash happened. She told the Free Press on Saturday that she did not remember seeing the gate down or the lights flashing.

Amtrak said the surveillance video taken from the train shows otherwise.

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5 fatal seconds

McFadden said that, from his view, the entire incident — from the time he looked up to the time the car was smashed — took five seconds.

When the train hit, he heard a loud boom, as if someone had picked the car “up 20 feet in the air and dropped it.”

He immediately called his boss to tell him what he saw, headed off the landfill to his pickup and headed toward the crash site.

Friends and loved ones have said the young people were in a rush — Broughton was hurrying to get to work at Kroger in Brownstown Township and Sadler's mother had told her daughter to come home.

McFadden said he sees the crash as a simple case of poor judgment. There's no mistaking the train's blaring horn, he said.

“There's no way,” McFadden said, “even if your windows were up.”