Metro officials are investigating the circumstances leading to the death of a 63-year-old D.C. man, trying to determine how and why he was hit by a train at the Farragut North station. Transit police are interviewing the friends of the man and reviewing video from the station to determine how he got into the tracks — whether he fell, jumped or was pushed.
His was the latest death to plague the transit agency. Not only did nine die in the June 2009 Fort Totten train crash, but at least 15 suicides occurred in the system in the past two years. Four track workers were killed in three separate accidents. And at least three riders have died after accidentally falling onto the tracks.
In this case, the man’s body was spotted by a rider about noon Saturday, although it was not immediately clear when the man had been struck or how long ago he had died, Metro spokeswoman Angela Gates said.
The station was closed for about two hours on a weekend when the system was already hobbled by the closure of the nearby Foggy Bottom station for track work.
The man has been identified as a 63-year-old resident of Southeast D.C., and his family has been notified, Gates said. But Gates declined to release his name, citing the agency’s privacy policy. She said he was not a Metro employee.
The agency has tried various tactics to combat the recent spate of deaths. In addition to running all trains in manual mode after the deadly crash, it has been reviewing its worker safety protocols to prevent its track workers from getting hit on the job. It has pledged $250,000 toward a suicide prevention program. And it has been installing raised, bumpy tiles along the platform to help blind riders feel the edge, plus replacing the slick terra-cotta hexagon tiles with textured pavers on some outdoor train platforms to make them less slippery.
