Four killed in Texas as train hits parade float carrying veterans

MIDLAND, Texas (Reuters) — A freight train crashed into a parade float car­ry­ing U.S. mil­i­tary vet­er­ans and their spouses in Mid­land, Texas on Thurs­day, killing four peo­ple and injur­ing at least 16, police and parade orga­niz­ers said.

Two of the vic­tims died at the scene and two oth­ers at a Mid­land hos­pi­tal, police said.

One of those hos­pi­tal­ized was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion and one was air­lifted to a med­ical facil­ity in Lub­bock, a police state­ment said late on Thurs­day. Four oth­ers were in sta­ble con­di­tion and 10 were treated and released, the state­ment said.

Police ear­lier in the day had said that 10 peo­ple were in crit­i­cal con­di­tion and a total of 17 peo­ple were injured.

The tragedy hap­pened as two flatbed trail­ers car­ry­ing vet­er­ans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, some who suf­fered major injuries in com­bat, attempted to cross rail­road tracks dur­ing the “Hunt for Heroes” parade.

“The first flatbed crossed the train tracks com­pletely. The sec­ond did not make it across before being struck by the train,” the police state­ment said.

It described a scene of vet­er­ans and their spouses seated on chairs attempt­ing to jump off the trail­ers to escape the col­li­sion. There were 26 peo­ple on the float hit by the train includ­ing a dozen vet­er­ans, a dozen spouses and two escorts.

“It’s hard to look at. It’s a very tragic event, very unfor­tu­nate,” said Mid­land Police Chief Price Robin­son, speak­ing from the site of the accident.

The float was car­ry­ing the vet­er­ans through Mid­land to a ban­quet in their honor, said Sonny Cleere, an orga­nizer of the Hunt for Heroes event in San Angelo, Texas.

Hours after the acci­dent, one of the floats was still sit­ting near the train tracks, white poster board adorn­ing the side and about a dozen empty chairs sit­ting on the trailer bed.

The parade kicked off a week­end of events, includ­ing the ban­quet and a hunt­ing expe­di­tion, to honor wounded vet­er­ans, Cleere said. Those events have now been canceled.

A Union Pacific Corp spokesman said the National Trans­porta­tion Safety Board was involved in the crash inves­ti­ga­tion, and referred all ques­tions to that agency. A spokes­woman for the NTSB said inves­ti­ga­tors were on their way to the scene.

Many of the 25 west Texas vet­er­ans being hon­ored served mul­ti­ple deploy­ments in Iraq and Afghanistan, accord­ing to biogra­phies posted on a web­site cre­ated by event orga­niz­ers. They were described as hav­ing been shot on the bat­tle­field or wounded by impro­vised explo­sive devices.

Some described suf­fer­ing trau­matic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress dis­or­der as a result of their deploy­ments, the biogra­phies said.

The Pen­ta­gon said in a state­ment that Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta, who is trav­el­ing in Asia, “was deeply sad­dened by news of the tragic acci­dent” involv­ing the vet­er­ans and their spouses.

Tracy Scott, a Mid­land oil­field worker who did not wit­ness the crash but arrived at the scene later, told Reuters the train did not derail, but con­tin­ued to move roughly half a mile past where the col­li­sion occurred before com­ing to a stop.

Pho­tos posted on the web­site of The Mid­land Reporter-Telegram showed a double-decker freight train stopped at the road cross­ing, with debris scat­tered around a flatbed trailer and chairs in dis­ar­ray after tum­bling off the parade float. Each chair had the name of a vet­eran below it.

Author­i­ties did not imme­di­ately release the names of those injured or killed.