A 5-year-old girl became separated from her mother when getting on a Red Line train, with the child hysterical on the train and the mother left on the platform. The train operator stopped the train while still at the station but refused to reopen the doors, according to a rider on the train.
“The operator should have opened the door,” said Jessica Stallings, 27. “You shouldn’t leave a 5-year-old with strangers. It was lucky, there were a lot of concerned passengers.”
But Metro says the train operator was following agency rules. “Once a train is off the platform, we don’t open the doors unless it’s an emergency,” said Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said. “This doesn’t qualify as an emergency.”
The incident happened just after 8 a.m. Monday at the Silver Spring station — the other end of the line from where a bomb scare had shut down service that morning. When the other riders on the train realized what had happened, about 10 of them jumped from their seats, Stallings said. They used the intercom to alert the operator.
The operator pulled the train forward, then stopped the train after a few feet, still at the platform, Stallings said. “It really didn’t feel like it had moved very far,” she said.
“He wouldn’t open the doors,” she said. “He said they’ll have to go to the next stop.”
Meanwhile, she said the child was crying. “She was pretty hysterical,” Stallings said. “The mom looked really upset.”
After the operator restarted the train, he asked via the intercom how old the girl was, Stallings said. They told him she was 5, Stallings said.
Stessel explained that Metro has a policy for children separated from parents to be reunited at the next stop. Train operators aren’t supposed to open the doors once any portion of the train has left the station as it would expose some passengers to the track, he said. Trains also aren’t allowed to reverse, he said, as it interferes with the flow of train traffic and delays riders.
A woman and a Metro employee who happened to be on the rail car accompanied the girl off the train at the Takoma stop, Stallings said. The station manager there waited for the train to arrive at that station to intercept the child. The girl’s mother arrived on the next train, Stessel said, and the child and mother were reunited.
