Marcees Kilpatrick shouldn’t have been next to the SunRail
tracks on Friday when he was hit and killed by the commuter train last week.
I shouldn’t have been playing at the water company’s
abandoned pumping station when I was Marcees’ age.
The pumping station was cool. It had ladders, catwalks, rusty
machinery and huge empty tanks. Me and Craig used to pretend the station was
our secret headquarters for cops and robbers and spy adventures.
There were hundreds of ways we could have died in the
pumping station. Craig and I were lucky and survived childhood. Marcees did
not.
Boys will be boys and we sometimes behave recklessly. When
you’re 13 you assume you’ll live forever. Now we know that’s not true. Kids
need the protection and guidance of adults.
To their credit, SunRail has been running an aggressive
safety campaign for years. We urge FDOT managers to redouble those efforts and
seek out and fence off other cut-throughs to discourage kids from getting on
the tracks.
Hopefully everyone is sending out prayers for Marcees’
family. While you’re at it, please send prayers for the engineer and conductor
operating the SunRail train that killed Marcees. When I was a kid, a friend’s
dad was the engineer of a train that killed a man. The tragedy haunted that
father and he died prematurely.
Thank you for considering the other victims of this tragedy. It was an accident that could have been prevented. I dont blame the train at all. But agree that it should be fenced off especially in areas where there are homes. But even with that, you won't prevent people from trying to prove they are faster than the train.
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