Woman takes her own life on train tracks Woman takes her own life on train tracks (February 27, 2004)

Death is Caltrain's first this year

By Dan Stapleton

A woman who died when she ran in front of the train near the intersection of Castro St. and West Evelyn Ave. at 2:50 p.m. on Feb. 18 has been identified as 49-year-old Olga Leach of Livermore. Witnesses said Leach stood by the track waiting for the train before running onto the tracks in its path.

Southbound trains were delayed for 40 minutes while police and Caltrain officials investigated the scene. The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner has determined that the death was a suicide.

This incident marks the first death on Caltrain's tracks this year. Throughout the system, Caltrain has an average of 10 to 15 fatalities from suicides and accidents each year. There has not been a train-related death in Mountain View since a May 2003 suicide near Rengstorff Avenue. However, two high school students killed themselves on the train tracks in Palo Alto within the past 18 months.

"If you walk along our rail corridors, you see two types of sign. One is 'No Trespassing,' and the other is a sign showing holding hands with the words 'There is Help,'" said Caltrain spokesperson Jayme Kunz. Caltrain has put up 400 of these signs in the past two years and works closely with suicide prevention groups to discourage people from using trains to kill themselves.

"We try to educate people about the effect it has on the train engineer and the passengers when someone uses a train as an easy way out," added Kunz. "Trains take about half a mile to stop, and when a engineer sees someone standing on the tracks he can blow his whistle all he wants, but unless they move out of the way there's a period of time when he knows the train is about to hit someone."

E-mail Dan Stapleton at dstapleton@mv-voice.com

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