Dec. 04--Guadalupe Deluna can't stop seeing the image of a little boy lying in the street calling out for help after he was struck by a commuter train near the Burr Oak Station in Blue Island.
Guadalupe, 14, said she was waiting for the bus Tuesday morning with her mother and younger sister when they heard the 11-year-old screaming about 40 feet away. Multiple witnesses said one of his legs had been severed.
"He was crying, 'Help,' to help him," Guadalupe said Wednesday at her home, less than a block from the scene of the accident. "I kept seeing it."
The victim survived and was "convalescing well," according to officials at his Calumet Park elementary school. District Superintendent Elizabeth Reynolds identified the boy as a fourth-grader at Burr Oak School. His family could not be reached and authorities didn't have a medical update for him Wednesday.
But parents and children who were at the scene said they were still recovering from the trauma of the accident.
Guadalupe's mother, Patricia Valadez, said she had trouble falling asleep Tuesday night. She didn't see the train strike the boy but found him lying in the street, screaming, "My leg hurts."
Valadez said the boy seemed confused and couldn't tell her his name or where he lived. She frantically searched his backpack for an address or telephone number without success. Then an ambulance took him away.
"I was very afraid, very scared," Valadez said. "I wouldn't want it to happen to any of my kids."
Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said Train No. 504 was approaching the Burr Oak Station about 7:25 a.m. when it struck the boy, who was on the east sidewalk of Winchester Avenue, which runs north-south.
"As he was coming in, the engineer saw the crossing gates were down, the bells were sounding, signals flashing and saw a young male pedestrian running north," Gillis said.
"He hit the brakes," Gillis said. "He applied the emergency brakes, but he could not stop in time, and he hit the pedestrian with the left front side of the train."
"I've never seen anything like this, and I've been here 24 years," said Deputy Chief Michael Cornell, of the Blue Island Police Department. "It breaks my heart."
Cornell said no other pedestrians have been injured at that stop. He added that railroad crossing gates were lowered and lights were activated. But any time an accident happens, "all the mechanics are checked," Cornell added.
Winchester, a one-way street going north, was not blocked Wednesday and no new safety precautions were planned.
Cornell said the boy was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Though it is already done on a regular basis, police plan on visiting schools to talk to students about train safety, he said.
"We're reaching out to all the schools," Cornell said. "We want to drum into them. ... We want to tell them that trains are nothing to mess with."
While parents and children at the bus stop Wednesday were shaken, they didn't believe the area was dangerous. Valadez said she's waited for the school bus there with her five children for years, without incident.
Osvaldo Ramos, 11, said he also saw the boy crying in the street, injured.
Osvaldo's mother, Rosa Arias, said the boy usually catches the bus on the other side of the tracks.
Guadalupe said she hopes he heals and his family is recovering.
"The good thing is that he's alive," she said.
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