An Amtrak Cascades train en route from Eugene to Seattle on Sunday struck and killed a woman who was walking either on or near the tracks north of Oregon City, the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office said.
The victim’s name is not being released until her family can be notified, said Sgt. Ross Clemson, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office.
Amtrak spokesperson Kimberly Woods said there were no injuries to the 183 passengers and crew members aboard the train.
An online tracker shows that the train was delayed for nearly two hours 8 miles southeast of Portland on Sunday morning.
“We were just north of Oregon City. We were in the woods and we had just passed underneath a trestle,” passenger Lorraine Berry said in a phone interview Sunday morning from on board the train.
The train stopped moving at around 10:16 am, Berry said, and a notice over the loudspeaker informed passengers that the delay was due to “a trespasser coming into contact with the train’s equipment.”
That was followed by another update informing passengers that a person who had been walking on the tracks had been hit “at speed,” Berry said. The train came to a stop a short distance later to wait for the authorities. Amtrak records show that it started moving again at 11:24 am, then stopped again five minutes later. Berry said that was in order to wait for a new crew to swap in for the rest of the journey. The train began moving north again towards Portland by 12:09 pm.
“It’s very upsetting, not only because I feel horrible for the crew on the train, but because I’m trying to imagine the life of the person who was on the tracks,” Berry said. “I hope that this person’s passing was quick and painless and that their family finds out soon, I would hate to feel that they died alone.”
An Amtrak train hit and killed a deaf man who was walking across the train tracks at a pedestrian intersection in Canby last June and an 18-year-old student at Canby High School was hit and killed by a freight train just north of a crosswalk near the Clackamas County Fairgrounds in March.
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