SURAT THANI: A man and his daughter were killed and his wife seriously injured when their pickup went through an unmanned railway crossing into the path of a Bangkok-bound cargo train in Wiang Sa district in this southern province yesterday morning.
Police received reports of the crash around 8am, said Pol Capt Kittisak Songphayom, deputy investigation chief at Wiang Sa station.
A crushed Isuzu pickup truck with Surat Thani licence plates was found overturned about 50 metres from the railway crossing when police and rescue workers arrived. There was no barrier at the crossing, only a warning light.
The body of a girl, identified as Ananthalak Lao-ubon, 9, was found outside the pickup truck. Driver Kritsakorn Lao-ubon, 45, father of the girl, was found dead behind the wheel. His wife Duangporn Khao, 42, was seriously hurt and trapped in the wreckage. She was rushed to a hospital and underwent emergency surgery, police said.
Two carriages of the cargo train, travelling from Thung Song district to Bangkok, were partly damaged in the accident.
Residents told police the family, whose house was not far from the scene, regularly used the route to go to Ban Song market in Wiang Sa district.
A police investigation found the train sounded a horn when approaching the crossing but the pickup truck went through it.
The girl was thrown out of the vehicle by the force of the impact.
It was the third train crash in Surat Thani this year.
On Jan 22, two people were killed when their pickup truck was hit by a Bangkok-Yala express train at a crossing in Tha Chana district.
A month later, two people in a car were killed when another Bangkok-Yala express rammed into their vehicle at a crossing in Phunphin district.
The third incident brought the total number of people killed in crossings crashes to six in the first five months of the year.
