A rush-hour collision Monday between two Metro trains north of downtown Washington, D.C., killed at least three people, CNN confirmed.
The crash occurred just before 5 p.m. on an above-ground track on the Red Line near Takoma Park, Maryland, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Forty-two people were taken to a hospital, according to CNN affiliate WUSA. Watch report from the scene » Video from CNN affiliate WJLA showed much of one Metro car on top of another. Both trains were on the same track, said John Catoe, Metro general manager. Beyond that, he was unable to say why the crash occurred. “We will find what happened and will fix what happened,” Catoe said. Emergency personnel helped injured passengers, some on stretchers, from the wreckage, video from WUSA shows. Watch injured passengers limp from the scene » Fire department personnel were cutting through the trains and were still in the process of getting people from the wreckage, officials said at a press briefing. Jodie Wickett, a nurse who was a passenger on one of the trains, said she was was texting on her phone when she felt a bump. “About 5-10 seconds later, the train came to a complete halt — we went flying,” Jodie Wickett said. She said she went through some of the cars, trying to help people. “There was debris and people pinned underneath,” she said.
Ten to 15 minutes passed before she saw emergency personnel, she said. Groups of people wearing green plastic ribbons to show they had been checked by paramedics left the crash scene about 90 minutes after the crash. Some were crying, and a woman with her arm in a sling who gave her name as Tijuana described the crash as “an earthquake.”
