A woman died Tuesday morning after being struck by a train near 14th Street and Leslie Street Southeast in Salem, prompting police to shut down nearby roads for several hours as they investigated. The crash happened just before 8 a.m., and officers who arrived found the woman with serious injuries before she was rushed to the hospital.
Salem Police responded to the scene of what they described as a deadly train crash involving a pedestrian, according to KVAL. Officers found the woman with serious injuries and transported her to Salem Hospital, but as KATU reports, she died from those injuries. Her name has not yet been released, per KPTV.
Streets Reopen After Hours-Long Closure
Hines Street and McGilchrist Avenue Southeast were closed while officers investigated the crash, the station's report notes. The roadways reopened just after 11:30 a.m., allowing traffic to return to the area near the crash site.
Details of what led to the crash are not yet clear, according to a report from Yahoo News. Investigators had not clarified how the woman came to be near the tracks or what preceded the collision as of the latest available reporting.
A Pattern of Deadly Crossings in Salem
Tuesday's crash marks the latest in a string of fatal and serious train-pedestrian incidents in Salem over the past several years. A woman was killed in a collision with an Amtrak train in Salem on Feb. 27, when police responded at about 7:50 p.m. to reports of a train crashing into a pedestrian on 12th Street NE between Center and Chemeketa streets, according to the Statesman Journal.
In another earlier incident, a freight train struck a 31-year-old Salem woman, seriously injuring her, in a crash that happened shortly before 8 p.m. at Rural Avenue SE and 13th Street SE, KATU reported separately. And in August 2022, an early-morning collision along the Union Pacific rail line in southeast Salem killed a man who had been walking along the tracks, according to the City of Salem. In that case, the rail crew sounded the horn and attempted to stop the train but could not avoid the collision.
Several streets near downtown Salem were also closed in September 2024 after a separate collision involving a train and a pedestrian, the Statesman Journal reported at the time, with eastbound and westbound traffic shut down from Mill Street SE to D Street NE before the train was moving again just after 9:30 a.m. Federal data tracked by the U.S. Department of Transportation catalogs highway-rail grade-crossing incidents, fatalities and injuries across the country, broken down by state, county, city, railroad and warning device, though it was not immediately clear whether Tuesday's crash involved a marked crossing.
This is a developing story, and Hoodline will update it as more information becomes available.
