IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Witness A Suicide
The Washington Post invterviews Amtrak engineer Bruce Evans, 61, who “has learned to avert his eyes as his train barrels down on a person on the tracks”:
In 20 years at the controls of Amtrak locomotives, Evans has watched a dozen fatalities unfold in agonizing close-up.
"After the first time you strike somebody, you just turn your head and wait for the impact," said Evans, an engineer based out of Washington's Union Station.
The first one was sitting on a quiet stretch of rail near Weldon, N.C., a man ignoring Evans's frantic horn blasts, waiting for a locomotive roaring at 75 mph to end his despair. "When I looked in the mirror, he was tumbling in the air, just flying," Evans said. "I can see it as clearly as if it was happening in front of me right now."
Colorfast mental snapshots of horror, a sense of overwhelming helplessness, sympathy and sometimes anger - these are the aftershocks that engineers and subway train operators report from their special perch as unwilling agents of sudden death. …
"It's such a mixture of both anger and compassion, I don't know where one ends and the other starts," said Evans, who estimates that about half of his fatal strikes were suicides. "They're doing this to you, too. It's a hard thing to take home." …
Evans reminds himself that he is no more to blame in a death-by-train case than sleeping pills or razor blades are the cause of other suicides. "I'm no different than a bullet being shot out of gun," he said. "I'm just the weapon."
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