Train, car crash kills one, not two

NEW HAVEN, Ind. (WANE) - UPDATE: The Allen County coroner's office released the name of the person killed on Friday when a car and train collided in New Haven.

The victim was identified as Ramon Aleman, 55, of Fort Wayne. The report said he died of blunt force trauma, but listed the manner of death as still pending.

Previously posted story:

One person is dead after a train and car collided on North River Road east of Landin Road in New Haven.

The crash happened around 7:15 Friday morning.

"The car was pushed down the track onto a bridge," Stacey Fleming, a spokesperson for the Fort Wayne Fire Department, said.

New Haven Fire Department was first to arrive, but called FWFD's Special Operations Rescue Team (SORT) for help. The SORT team specializes in high angle rescues.

"The bridge is open underneath, so guys were stepping on railroad ties trying to walk out there which made it an unsafe spot for us to be in," Ed Lytal, the New Haven EMS chief, said. "We don't have the capability to perform high or low angle rescues. FWFD does a really good job at that. That type of interoperability, that type of team work that we're all about."

The train crew initially thought two people were in the car. New Haven firefighters searched the area around the tracks and SORT members were able to search 80 percent of the car, but another person was not found.

"We have cameras for confined spaces, in this case, trying to determine how many people were in the car," Fleming said. "We were able to check the voids where human hands and rescuers could not reach."

A rail crane moved the car off the tracks to another location for a final search and to extricate the driver's body. It was confirmed that there was only one person in the car.

The victim's name hasn't been released. A worker at the scene told NewsChannel 15 that the victim was a middle-aged man. The worker said he heard a person who lives by the tracks tell police that the man was sitting in the car at the tracks for about 20 minutes waiving cars to pass him. When he heard a train, the man pulled onto the tracks, according to the worker at the scene.

A representative from Norfolk Southern said the lights and gate at the crossing were in place and in working condition at the time of the crash.

The track speed limit in that area is 60 miles per hour. The worker at the scene told NewsChannel 15 that the train crew was able to hit the air brakes and the train was going about 30 miles per hour at impact. The train had 144 containers on it and was heading from the Fort Wayne are to Missouri.

The tracks and North River Road were closed for several hours Friday morning.

"When the gates go down, stop. Don't go around them," Lytal said. "The train will always win."