Five people were killed when a train crashed into a van in Mississippi over the weekend.
The crash occurred in the small rural town of Wiggins, about 45 minutes North of Biloxi. A freight train collided with a minivan at a railroad crossing. It was the second such accident in the past few weeks at the same crossing.
Stone County Coroner Wayne Flurry said the five deceased were all passengers in the van. Only one passenger survived and was taken to a local hospital. The five deceased included: Ryan C. Peterson, 26, who was driving the vehicle; Kristina Carver, 45, who was sitting in the front seat; two of Carver’s daughters, 22-year-old Emley Chamblee and 20-year-old Sarabeth Chamblee; and 23-year-old Demarcus Perkins.
The Canadian Pacific Kansas City railroad confirmed that one of its freight trains was involved in the crash. No one on board the train was injured.
The Stone County Sheriff's Office said it was investigating the crash.
Not the First Time
The crash was the second such accident at the same crossing on Pump Branch Road near the intersection of U.S. Highway 49.A report in the
Stone County Enterprise from February stated that a pickup truck was struck by a train in the driver's side rear. The driver had to be cut from the vehicle using the Jaws of Life and was airlifted to a hospital. The report also noted that two other crashes had occurred in the past three years: one in 2023 that claimed the life of a 30 year-old Saucier man who was driving his pickup truck across the crossing; and a 2023 crash that killed a female passenger in a minivan.
According to a fact sheet from the
Texas Department of Insurance, the average freight train weighs about 12 million pounds, more than 4,000 times the weight of a car, while a freight train traveling 55 miles per hour may take a mile or more to come to a complete stop. The majority of collisions occur when the train is moving at 30 mph or less. But in a quarter of incidents, the train is already in the crossing when it strikes the car; half of these incidents occur in crossings with warning signals. These incidents result in roughly 2,000 fatalities at railroad crossings each year.
Stone County Sheriff Todd Stewart told local news outlet
WLOX that first responders had to cut their way through the nearby woods to reach the car. The crossing does not have crossing gates. Jimmy Springs, a member of the Stone County Board of Supervisors, told WLOX he had previously reached out to Mississippi Department of Transportation railroad engineers, who told him that gates are being delivered for the Pump Branch Road crossing and another one, but it may take up to a year for them to be installed.
NTD reached out to the Stone County Sheriff's Office for comment and did not receive a response before publication time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
