Maryland Transit Administration IDs one of pedestrians struck and killed by MARC train
One of the deceased is Summer Giffin, a 20-year-old woman from Knoxville, Maryland, according to emails from transit spokesperson Veronica Battisti.
The Knoxville zip code includes the Sandy Hook area and other communities in the southern tip of Washington County as well as parts of nearby Frederick County, according to ZipCodes.org.
Giffin was one of two people who were on the train tracks when a MARC train heading from Washington, D.C., to Martinsburg, W.Va., struck them and they died, Battisti has said.
The incident occurred around 6:15 p.m. May 6, on CSX tracks in the Sandy Hook area.
In organizing a funeral and memorial GoFundMe for her sister, Destiny Giffin posted, "Please help show her love and celebrate her life that was taken to [sic] soon she was a hero in the long run losing her life to try help a boy not get hit by a train."
When The Herald-Mail inquired whether circumstances of the crash were available, Battisti emailed on May 7 that the incident remained under investigation.
The GoFundMe had raised more than $9,600 as of May 7.
About 100 passengers on MARC Train 875 were transferred to another train to complete their trip after the incident, Battisti has said.
The affected route handles Amtrak and freight traffic as well as MARC commuter trains, CSX spokesperson Austin Staton said.
Traffic on those tracks resumed around 9:15 p.m. May 6, Staton said in an email.
Both CSX and transit officials stressed the dangers of walking on or alongside railroad tracks.
CSX has tracks along Sandy Hook Road in southern Washington County that cross the Potomac to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The tracks in that area are not far from the river with the route following the curves in the Potomac.
On June 11, 1999, two male pedestrians from North Potomac, Md., were killed by a MARC train in the Sandy Hook Road area. Eyewitnesses told The Herald-Mail at the time that the men had finished inner tubing in the nearby Potomac and were sitting on their inner tubes on the tracks.
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This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: MTA releases ID of woman struck and killed by MARC train
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