A man died Wednesday morning after he was hit by a Red Line Metro train in what authorities said appears to have been a suicide.
The six-car train, which was heading toward the District from the Shady Grove stop in Rockville, hit the man along the station’s outdoor platform at about 9:50 a.m., delaying service there for about two hours.
Witnesses told Metro officials the man appeared to have intentionally moved into the path of the train, said Metro spokeswoman Candace Smith. Montgomery County police, who are leading the investigation, also said the death does not appear to involve foul play.
However, they said they were still investigating whether the man jumped from the platform or whether he was on the tracks when the train came into the station.
Such deaths typically happen about seven times a year in the Metro transit system, Smith said.
They occur in subway systems worldwide in such numbers that public health experts study the deaths, concerned about the lasting effect of the high-profile acts on the drivers of the trains and throngs of passengers.
A study from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in the fall found that half of all 668 New York City subway-related fatalities over a 13-year period were suicides. About 47 percent were accidental and 1.5 percent were homicides.
In Wednesday’s case, the man was trapped underneath the rail car for about 20 minutes until a Montgomery County Fire and Rescue team could pull him out.
He still had vital signs at that point, fire spokesman Pete Piringer said, and was rushed to Suburban Hospital’s trauma center in Bethesda. But he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving there.
The incident delayed service on the line until about noon. Metro operated a train on one track between Shady Grove and the next two stops on the line, Rockville and Twinbrook, and shuttled 350 passengers on buses among those stations.
