In the fall of 2015, 61-year-old Donald LeRoy Brown was riding his motorized wheelchair across the train tracks south of the Murray North TRAX station.
The wheelchair hit a hole and tipped over, spilling Brown onto the middle of the tracks, where he was hit by a train.
His family filed a lawsuit against the Utah Transit Authority in 3rd District Court on Tuesday, claiming that train officials were responsible for not filling in the hole that caused Brown’s spill on Oct. 2, 2015.
A woman was with Brown when he fell on the northbound tracks, according to the lawsuit. For eight minutes she tried to move him before the train hit him.
Meanwhile, a southbound train had passed on the other set of tracks two minutes before the northbound train crashed into Brown, the lawsuit states.
“Apparently, the southbound driver did not notify the northbound driver of the pedestrian in the middle of the tracks,” the lawsuit states.
If someone falls on the train tracks, there should be some type of monitoring service to notify oncoming trains, the lawsuit states, not only to protect the person on the tracks, but also the passengers on the train.
A spokeswoman for UTA said Wednesday that agency officials routinely inspect crossings to make sure everything complies with safety requirements.
UTA conducted an investigation and “concluded that the crossing was devoid of safety hazards. UTA vigorously disputes the Brown family’s account of the facts and will defend against this lawsuit in court,” spokeswoman Erika Shubin wrote in an emailed statement.
“This is a tragic accident and UTA offers its sympathy to the Brown family for their loss. Safety is UTA’s top priority,” Shubin added.
The family is requesting compensation for damages, as well as attorney fees.
After the crash, a UTA spokesman had told KUTV that Brown was hit while trying to rush ahead of an oncoming train. The spokesman also said officials had checked out the crosswalk and determined that everything met federal code and guidelines.
But a then-UTA official had criticized the agency’s statement about Brown’s death.
The official, J. Michael Clara, has since been fired. He filed a whistleblower complaint in January, 2016, alleging that he had been fired for warning the agency that it was violating federal safety rules.
In the complaint, he wrote that he had told supervisors about his concern with many UTA railroad crossings. The crossings weren’t compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act, as they have a gap between the tracks and the asphalt, Clara wrote in the complaint, which he filed after being fired on Nov. 20, 2015.
“We drove over to the 4500 S. Trax station and I showed [a manager] what I was talking about,” Clara wrote in the complaint. He also wrote that his own supervisor “told me to let it go because I had already drawn too much attention to myself and I was jeopardizing my position at UTA.”
Shubin wrote that Clara’s departure from UTA “had nothing to do with the safety-related functions of his job.”
