Two teenage boys in state custody who had run away from a group home in Lake Charles were killed by a train early Wednesday after falling asleep on the tracks, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office said.

Alex Otto, 14, of St. Mary Parish, was found dead on the tracks after 1:30 a.m. by Calcasieu Parish deputies, summoned to the tracks, less than a mile east of Highway 3256 in Lake Charles, after a report from Union Pacific Railroad that someone had been struck.

The second boy, Sonny Adams, 16, of Avondale, was found by 11:15 a.m. His corpse was in English Bayou, which runs beneath the train track.

Adams entered state Office of Youth Development custody in March, after Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court Judge Nancy Konrad heard his case, said Simon Gonsoulin, deputy secretary of Louisiana Youth Services. Adams was sentenced to be under state supervision, whether it be probation or custody, until January 2008. Otto was one of Louisiana's 613 foster children.

Deputies also discovered a third teenage boy, who also had left the Boys and Girls Village residential home the night before, sleeping under a bridge near the tracks. That boy told deputies that Otto and Adams were sleeping on the train track when they were struck.

The three boys were reported missing Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. by the group home, which called the sheriff. Deputies have received 57 reports of runaways from the group home since January, said sheriff's department spokeswoman Kim Myers.

"Alex had been in and out of our system since he was 9 years old, and this is a tragic end to such a short life," said Marketa Gautreau, assistant secretary of the state Office of Community Services.

Gautreau said that an early review shows that the Boys and Girls Village "acted appropriately." Group homes are "nonsecure" residential centers, unlike juvenile prisons, which have guards and fences topped with razor wire.

"This is a group home and not a 'lockdown' facility," she said.

Gonsoulin said, "We are two agencies working very closely together. We're in the process of exchanging information. We're going to jointly look into this."

Ann Williamson, secretary of the Department of Social Services, announced the double fatality Wednesday at a meeting of experts on poverty and vulnerable families gathered to discuss solutions in a post-Katrina New Orleans.

"We lost two children this morning," Williamson told the group, which included researchers from the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. "When we made the call to the aunt of one boy, she said, 'We lost him long ago,' " Williamson said. "It's not OK. It was not OK before Katrina and Rita. It's not OK now. Not all of our children are well."

Boys and Girls Village, a nonprofit group started 57 years ago, is one of 32 agencies under contract with the state's Office of Youth Development to house 443 juvenile delinquents.

It also is home to children taken away from troubled families by the state Department of Social Services, which has 50 licensed group homes for 613 foster children across the state.

The unharmed teenager, who was taken to the hospital for observation, was, like Otto, in the custody of the state's social services department.