The Gilroy man killed Jan. 9 when a Union Pacific vehicle slammed into his pickup truck has been identified as Donald Williams, 54, the Santa Clara County Coroner-Medical Examiner confirmed.
The cause of his death was “positional asphyxia”, which means he was trapped in a position that rendered him unable to breathe, a spokesperson for the office said.
Williams’ pickup was struck, overturned and pushed along the tracks by a railroad maintenance vehicle on the Union Pacific line at Masten Avenue and Monterey Road in north Gilroy at 12:58 p.m.
The safety crossing arms designed to hold back traffic were in the upright position at the time of the collision and Union Pacific employees told investigators the crossing arms had malfunctioned before, according to the California Highway Patrol. Days before the fatal collision, a witness told the Dispatch, Union Pacific workers did maintenance on the crossing arms that failed to go down at the crossing where Williams was killed.
“Either they were working on them because there was a known problem, or whatever they did when they were fixing them may have caused the collision,” said Alyssa Bianco, of Gilroy. She lives a mile east of the crash site and uses the crossing regularly. “You don’t know what to feel or what to think after seeing something like that,” she said.
A Union Pacific spokesperson Thursday confirmed the company is still investigating what caused the fatal collision.
Following the incident, spokesman Mark Davis said the company performed a diagnostic test at the scene.
“Everything met Federal Railroad Administration guidelines,” he said.
But Union Pacific employees told investigators at the scene that malfunctions of the crossing arms—especially when used in conjunction with the vehicle that struck Williams, a 2013 Spiker Lager—were a “common occurrence,” CHP Officer Herb Kellogg said.
The vehicle was southbound on the tracks that parallel Monterey Road when it struck Williams’ pickup, according to a CHP collision report.
Like many residents of the surrounding rural area wedged between unincorporated parts of Gilroy and San Martin, Bianco drives across the train tracks multiple times a day, including every morning with her 16-month-old in the back seat.
“If nobody is going to accept responsibility for something like this and explain to the public why this happened, then there’s no way we can trust that Union Pacific takes safety seriously,” Bianco said. “Until somebody can do that, I don’t know when I’ll feel safe crossing the tracks again. It was really an eye-opener.”
Union Pacific crossing arms failed to work at a separate intersection just two miles away from where Williams was struck and killed, one witness told the Dispatch.
Lolita Cavinta, of Morgan Hill, said she was stopped at the tracks at the juncture of Monterey Road and Church Avenue. The crossing arms came down and one maintenance vehicle passed by. Another passed by her, but then the safety crossing arms went up, she said.
“I saw there were at least two others on the tracks,” Cavinta said. “I had to guess because I saw them coming—and they weren’t stopping. So I just went for it.”
