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WEST JORDAN — About three weeks before 15-year-old Shariah Casper was killed by a TRAX train on June 8, an elementary school boy almost met the same fate at a nearby crossing, according to a high school teacher who witnessed the incident.
West Jordan High School coach and driver’s education instructor Dan Cowan was giving his students a road test when the TRAX crossing arms at 2200 West (near Sugar Factory Road) went down, he said.
While waiting for the train to pass, they noticed that a grade school boy, about 7 or 8 years old, had stepped too close to the tracks. Fortunately, the boy noticed the oncoming TRAX train and jumped back out of its way just in time.
“I about had a heart attack,” Cowan said.
One driver’s ed student let out a scream.
“The train must have missed him by just a couple of feet,” Cowan said.
Immediately upon returning to West Jordan High, Cowan said he told school officials what had happened, and said to them, “I can absolutely guarantee after watching what I watched that someone would get killed” at a TRAX crossing.
“It just made me sick when that girl was killed,” he said of the fatal accident at the 3200 West crossing.
The near miss happened May 16, which also happened to be the first day the Utah Transit Authority began running test trains on the new Mid-Jordan and West Valley lines.
Within hours Cowan also told Jordan School District officials, he said. Westvale Elementary School Principal Becky Gerber said she was informed the next day, May 17.
Gerber also said UTA never told her that the test trains would begin running May 16, either by email or phone. “I was not notified,” she told KSL Friday.
And Gerber said she told UTA about the boy’s near miss the same day she found out, when she spoke to the school’s UTA community involvement specialist.
That UTA employee referred questions to the transit authority’s senior media specialist, Gerry Carpenter, who issued the following statement: “While third-hand comment of a possible near-miss on the line was received in mid-May, no first-hand report, operator or witness statement was ever provided to UTA.”
In an email exchange, Carpenter added: “Never … were we able to confirm an incident occurred.”
When asked if UTA itself had conducted an investigation, Carpenter said only that Gerber “didn’t share any details that would have enabled us to move forward with an investigation.”
He added, “The possible near miss was discussed internally following the conversation with the principal.”
Carpenter also said notification emails went out to more than 850 subscribers before the May 16 start date, and UTA representatives had made a presentation at Westvale Elementary as recently as May 5.
For her part, Gerber said the UTA has always been responsive and supportive, helping the school prepare the children for the new TRAX crossing by holding assemblies, open houses, and appearing at parent-teacher conferences.
Gerber took immediate action when she found out about the boy’s brush with death, she said. She asked teachers to remind children of train crossing safety rules before leaving for the day. She sent a mass email to parents, sent notes home with the kids, had an auto-dialer phone message sent out, and monitored her students at the crossing the next day.
Gerber said she also switched one of two crossing guards from a nearby street intersection to help control children crossing the TRAX line.
To date, because there wasn't not a detailed description of the boy, Gerber isn’t sure which student was involved, but thinks it was likely one of about five or six second graders, of several students she interviewed.
“But they were oblivious,” Gerber said. “I think they had no idea what had almost happened.”
And without a specific identifiable student, no incident report could be filed, Gerber added.
West Jordan Mayor Melissa Johnson has expressed concern over the incidents and said the city will post a crossing guard at the 2200 West and 2700 West crossings next school year. And Wednesday the City Council will consider other options, such as flasher signs and roadway markings.
Carpenter said that by Tuesday, the UTA hopes to have removed several sound wall panels from four West Jordan TRAX crossings that impede pedestrians’ view of oncoming trains. And a “safety stand-down” could end by Friday, June 24, when testing the line would resume.
Besides removing the sound walls, transit officials are still reviewing other possible safety improvements, he said.
Gerber is trying to get parents to get involved in teaching the kids about the trains. “We can teach and teach and teach and teach, but I want the parents to actually walk them down there (to the crossing) to talk to their kids about how to be safe,“ she said.
“It makes me nervous because we don’t want to bury kids.”
Written by Ladd Brubaker with contributions from Sarah Dallof.
