A pedestrian was killed Monday afternoon when he was struck by an Amtrak train just north of Guadalupe, according to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department.
The incident occurred at about 3 p.m. near 12th Street and the rodeo grounds at the north end of the city near the intersection of intersection of Pacheco and 12th streets.
An Amtrak Surfliner train was northbound when the engineer “observed a male adult sitting on the tracks and then standing as the train approached,” said Kelly Hoover, a sheriff’s spokeswoman.
The train sounded its horn and applied its emergency braking system, but the man did not get out the way quickly enough, and was struck and fatally injured, Hoover said.
An investigation was underway, Hoover said, adding that the incident “appears to be accidental.”
Coroner’s personnel were on scene to recover the remains, and were in the process of making an identification of the victim and notifying next of kin.
Shortly before 3:30 p.m., the train headed north, but Amtrak indicated train traffic in the area was expected to be significantly delayed.
Personnel from the Guadalupe Police and Fire departments responded to scene along with sheriff’s deputies.
This marked at least the third train-related incident Guadalupe and other personnel responded to in approximately 14 months.
In late August, an Amtrak train struck a tanker-truck stuck on the tracks at an unmarked crossing into farm fields south of Guadalupe. None of the fertilizer leaked from the tanker and the driver escaped without injury.
In July 2017, a woman died after her vehicle was struck by a train at the marked crossing near the intersection of Highways 166 and 1 in Guadalupe.
Noozhawk North County Editor Janene Scully reported from the scene.
— Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton can be reached at tbolton@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
