Woman, baby safe after their car gets stuck on tracks, then hit by Brightline train in Delray Beach

DELRAY BEACH — A woman and baby got out of their car unharmed Tuesday morning just before the vehicle was hit by a Brightline train, according to Delray Beach Fire Rescue.

Delray Beach police said about 6:30 a.m. the 28-year-old woman and her 3-month-old daughter became stuck on the tracks in their car.

“It looks like the car got stuck,” Delray police spokesman Ted White said. The place where the car was stuck wasn’t a designated railroad crossing, White said.

“We believe the mom tried to cross the railroad tracks at a non-intersection,” White said.

Soon afterward the mother got out of the car with her child and started knocking on neighborhood doors and telling people someone was after her.

The woman was detained under the Baker Act, which allows people believed to be in mental distress to be assessed and observed. The Department of Children and Families is also involved. White said police were able to contact the 3-month-old’s grandmother.

White said the Brightline train wasn’t bearing down on the woman and her child when they got out of the car.

This is the second such incident this week.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said that driver went around the safety arm as train was approaching.

Sunday’s crash is believed to be the 54th fatality involving the company since January 2018.

Marc Charleus, 68, and his sister were killed in January when Charleus drove his SUV around a lowered crossing gate and into the train’s path in Aventura.

Witnesses said Charleus had been stopped behind the lowered gate but then darted around it, likely unaware that the Brightline train was barreling down the tracks at some 79 miles per hour.

To stop a train at that speed, the train would need about 1,500 feet of leeway, or more than one-quarter of a mile, officials with Brightline said.