CSX Train Derails In Historic Ellicott City, Killing 2 Young Women
Police have identified the two victims killed in the CSX train derailment in downtown Ellicott City overnight.
Elizabeth Conway Nass, 19, and Rose Louese Mayr, also 19, were killed when an eastbound freight train hauling coal came off the tracks of a rail bridge near Main Street in the historic downtown area around midnight. Both women were from Ellicott City.
The two women apparently were posting to Twitter just before they died.
"Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign..." Nass tweeted at 8:40 p.m. Monday, about three hours before the crash.
A preliminary investigation indicates that the women, believed to be on a walkway alongside the tracks, were crushed by falling coal.
Howard County police said that 21 of the train's 80 cars derailed or overturned about 12 miles outside of Baltimore, falling off the tracks that run along the Patapsco River to the east.
The train was en route from Grafton,W.V., to Baltimore.
"It was like midnight, I heard the train coming," recalled Lauren Ward, 23, who lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment in a building about 75 yards from the bridge. "It was really loud screeching. My dresser was shaking in my bedroom. I remember thinking, "It derailed"
In the wreckage, rescue workers found two bodies, later identified as Nass and Mayr.
The Associated Press reports that Nass was a student at James Madison University in Virginia. She made the dean's list in the fall of 2011 and was a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha's JMU chapter.
Mayr was a student at the University of Delaware, according to AP. She recorded a song by an Ellicott City musician titled "Not Yet."
Two train operators were on board the train, but neither was injured. The cause of the derailment remains under investigation. In addition to CSX investigators and Howard County police, National Transportation Safety Board personnel also are on the scene.
According to Jim Southworth, NTSB's lead investigator, there was a head-in camera on the train. The footage hasn't been reviewed and Southworth could not say if the train struck the women.
A preliminary investigation indicates that the women were buried under coal that fell onto the walkway.
It is unknown if the train operators saw the women on the bridge, but Southworth said there is no indication that they applied the brakes.
The 3,000-foot long train was carrying 9,000 tons of coal and traveling at 25 miles per hour, officials said.
Authorities said the fallen cars and coal crushed several vehicles parked in a county-owned lot beneath the tracks. Cranes are being brought in to remove the train cars from the vehicles and investigators are searching for additional victims. The rail bridge is reportedly about 20 feet off the ground.
Crews are working to clean up the spilled coal. Police said no hazardous materials were spilled. WJLA reports that representatives from the Maryland Department of the Environment are working to find out how much coal landed in the river and what the environmental impact might be.
Main Street and Frederick Road are closed from Ellicott City into Baltimore County.
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