'You, me, a handle of Burnett's': Last tweet of two tragic college students, 19, killed in freak crash by train that derailed and buried them under TONS of coal
- Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr were apparently drinking on railway bridge
- Both posted updates on Twitter showing pictures of them sitting high up
- They were killed after CSX train carrying coal derailed
- Two train operators not injured in derailment
PUBLISHED: 20:43 GMT, 21 August 2012 | UPDATED: 10:29 GMT, 22 August 2012
Two 19-year-old college students were killed by a train after they were allegedly hanging out and drinking on the tracks, causing it to derail and bury them under tons of coal.
Howard County police identified the victims as Elizabeth Conway Nass and Rose Louese Mayr of Ellicott City, Maryland.
Nass was a student at James Madison University in Virginia and Mayr was a student at the University of Delaware, police said.
The women had both posted photos and updates to their Twitter pages, one of their feet hanging off the bridge in Ellicott City, about 13 miles west of Baltimore, and another, which read: ‘Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign.’
Tragic end: Elizabeth Nass, left, and Rose Mayr, right, both 19, were
killed last night after they were apparently drinking on a train bridge,
causing the coal freighter to derail
Earlier, Nass had tweeted: ‘Once
before I leave you for school… you, me, a handle of burnett’s, and some
form of public transportation.’
Burnett's produces a variety of liquors, including vodka and gin.
Another photo Mayr posted showed what appeared to be two women's legs dangling from a bridge. 'Levitating,' Mayr wrote.
Ellicott City is a picturesque small town where there are several bars, and gift and antique shops in converted old buildings. The railroad runs across Main Street in Ellicott City, about 13 miles west of Baltimore.
Burnett's produces a variety of liquors, including vodka and gin.
Another photo Mayr posted showed what appeared to be two women's legs dangling from a bridge. 'Levitating,' Mayr wrote.
Ellicott City is a picturesque small town where there are several bars, and gift and antique shops in converted old buildings. The railroad runs across Main Street in Ellicott City, about 13 miles west of Baltimore.
A person who answered the telephone
at Nass' home declined to comment as did a family member who answered
the phone at a number listed for the Mayr family.
Two train operators were not harmed. Officials had to use cranes to remove some of the railroad cars.
'Many of those train cars fell onto automobiles, literally fell onto automobiles with the coal,' Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said. 'So you have massive piles of coal and heavy train cars on top of automobiles.'
Residents checked to see if their cars or friends' vehicles had been damaged on Tuesday morning.
Several grey CSX train cars were still on the bridge while others could be seen derailed farther down the rail line. A number of cars were in a wooded area of the train track that runs along the Patapsco River.
Benjamin Noppenberger lives downtown and said he was getting ready for bed when he heard the derailment. He and his wife thought it sounded like gunshots and waited about 10 minutes to go outside. 'We could see all the cars that fell over. I just saw catastrophe,' he said.
Jill Farrell, a 35-year-old assistant professor who lives across the street from the tracks, said she heard what sounded liked squealing brakes and then a huge crash.
Long day: Workers begin to clean up the wreckage; the train derailed
while crossing an overpass west of Baltimore, killing the two
19-year-old women and crushing several cars parked near the bridge
Rich history: An official walks past part of the derailed train; The train was passing through historic Ellicott City, around 13 miles outside of Baltimore
'It actually sounded like trains went off the tracks, and then silence,' she said.
The tracks follow the route of the nation's first commercial railroad between Baltimore and Ellicott City, completed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1830.
Young people often party in the nearby parking lot and often hang out on the tracks, despite fences around the area.
'It's just sort of a magnet for teenage high jinks,' said Shelly Wygant of the Howard County Historical Society.
Rich past: The tracks follow the route of the nation's first commercial
railroad between Baltimore and Ellicott City, completed by the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad in 1830
Two train operators were not harmed. Officials had to use cranes to remove some of the railroad cars.
'Many of those train cars fell onto automobiles, literally fell onto automobiles with the coal,' Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said. 'So you have massive piles of coal and heavy train cars on top of automobiles.'
Last tweet: Mayr's last tweet was this picture looking down from the bridge down on Ellicott City
Several grey CSX train cars were still on the bridge while others could be seen derailed farther down the rail line. A number of cars were in a wooded area of the train track that runs along the Patapsco River.
Benjamin Noppenberger lives downtown and said he was getting ready for bed when he heard the derailment. He and his wife thought it sounded like gunshots and waited about 10 minutes to go outside. 'We could see all the cars that fell over. I just saw catastrophe,' he said.
Jill Farrell, a 35-year-old assistant professor who lives across the street from the tracks, said she heard what sounded liked squealing brakes and then a huge crash.
Massive damage: Coal that spilled from the derailed freight train, bottom, partially covers cars in the parking lot below
Rich history: An official walks past part of the derailed train; The train was passing through historic Ellicott City, around 13 miles outside of Baltimore
'It actually sounded like trains went off the tracks, and then silence,' she said.
The tracks follow the route of the nation's first commercial railroad between Baltimore and Ellicott City, completed by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1830.
Young people often party in the nearby parking lot and often hang out on the tracks, despite fences around the area.
'It's just sort of a magnet for teenage high jinks,' said Shelly Wygant of the Howard County Historical Society.
Chronicling: An official photographs derailed train cars
im Southworth, investigator in charge
for the NTSB, declined to speculate on a possible cause. He said the
train was going about 25 miles per hour and was equipped with video
recording devices that investigators will review to help them determine
what happened.
Southworth said the train had two locomotives, was 3,000-feet-long and weighed 9,000 tons.
About 100 pounds of coal spilled into a tributary of the Patapsco River, a major Maryland waterway that parallels the tracks, said Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson.
He said much more coal lay along the edge of the tributary, raising concerns it could boost the acidity of the water or threaten aquatic life.
It is not clear if the women died
having been hit by the carriages or if they were in the cars when the
accident happened around midnight.
The NTSB is currently investigating signals, communication, conditions of the track, conditions of the bridge and equipment.
They are also determining if 25 miles per hour was the correct speed for that stretch of track, said Southworth. A track expert is flying in from Chicago.
Southworth also noted that the train was equipped with video that can provide information in the direction the train was headed.
The incident was the second partial derailment this month in Howard County on the railway's Old Main Line
Monday's derailment is the third accident this month in Maryland involving a CSX train, and the second partial derailment in Howard County, on the railway's Old Main Line from Relay to Point of Rocks.
VIDEO: Aerials of the scene where the train derailed, killing two college students...
An 80-car CSX train carrying 9,000 tons of coal derailed in downtown Ellicott City overnight, killing two college students who were hanging out near the tracks.
Videos:
Maryland train derailment witness: ‘I heard a huge crash’
Aerial footage: Train derails outside Baltimore
Story:
Friends mourn students killed in train derailment
Elizabeth Conway Nass and Rose Louese Mayr, both 19, were killed when the eastbound freight train came off the tracks of a 20-foot-tall rail bridge near Main Street in the historic downtown area around midnight.
The two women, both from Ellicott City, apparently were posting to Twitter just before they died. (See below.)
“Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign,” Nass tweeted before the crash. Tuesday morning, both Nass’ and Mayr’s Twitter accounts were public, but Mayr’s has since been set to private.
Howard County police said that 21 of the train’s 80 cars derailed or overturned about 12 miles outside Baltimore, coming off the tracks that run along the Patapsco River to the east. The train was en route from Grafton,W.Va., to Baltimore.
Verizon has said the train derailment disrupted some land-line service Tuesday morning, the Associated Press also reports. The outage affected some government servers.
The AP reports the problems reached the U.S. Navy base as far as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Lawyers preparing for a Sept. 11 pretrial hearing could not access information stored on government servers, but the connection was restored this afternoon. The company told the Associated Press it is rerouting network traffic to other facilities.
A preliminary investigation indicates that the women were on a walkway alongside the tracks and were crushed by falling coal.
“It was like midnight, I heard the train coming,” recalled Lauren Ward, 23, who lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment in a building about 75 yards from the bridge. “It was really loud screeching. My dresser was shaking in my bedroom. I remember thinking, ‘It derailed.’ ”
In the wreckage, rescue workers found two bodies, later identified as Nass and Mayr.
The Associated Press reports that Nass was a student at James Madison University in Virginia. She made the dean’s list in the fall of 2011 and was a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha’s JMU chapter.
Mayr was a student at the University of Delaware, according to the Associated Press.
Two train operators were on board the train, but neither was injured.
The cause of the derailment remains under investigation. In addition to CSX investigators and Howard County police, National Transportation Safety Board personnel also are on the scene.
According to Jim Southworth, NTSB’s lead investigator, there was a head-in camera on the train. The footage hasn’t been reviewed, and Southworth could not say whether the train struck the women.
It is unknown whether the train operators saw the women on the bridge, but Southworth said there is no indication that they applied the brakes.
When asked whether the women may have caused the accident, Southworth said, “This is an area that we’re looking into very closely — what the operators of the train, the engineer and the conductor, what they saw or didn’t, what the train recorder picked up.”
The 3,000-foot-long train was carrying 9,000 tons of coal and traveling at 25 miles per hour, officials said.
Authorities said one of the train cars fell off the bridge and onto a county-owned lot beneath the tracks, crushing several parked vehicles. Cranes are being brought in to remove the train cars from the vehicles, and investigators are searching for additional victims.
Crews are working to clean up the spilled coal, which also fell into the Patapsco River. Police said no hazardous materials were spilled. The Associated Press reports that about 100 pounds of coal spilled into a tributary of the river, and that more coal lay along the edge of the tributary. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson told AP there are concerns the coal will boost the acidity of the water or threaten aquatic life.
Main Street and Frederick Road are closed from Ellicott City into Baltimore County.
Southworth said the train had two locomotives, was 3,000-feet-long and weighed 9,000 tons.
About 100 pounds of coal spilled into a tributary of the Patapsco River, a major Maryland waterway that parallels the tracks, said Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson.
He said much more coal lay along the edge of the tributary, raising concerns it could boost the acidity of the water or threaten aquatic life.
'We could see all the cars that fell over. I just
saw catastrophe.'
Witness Benjamin Noppenberger
The NTSB is currently investigating signals, communication, conditions of the track, conditions of the bridge and equipment.
They are also determining if 25 miles per hour was the correct speed for that stretch of track, said Southworth. A track expert is flying in from Chicago.
Southworth also noted that the train was equipped with video that can provide information in the direction the train was headed.
The incident was the second partial derailment this month in Howard County on the railway's Old Main Line
Monday's derailment is the third accident this month in Maryland involving a CSX train, and the second partial derailment in Howard County, on the railway's Old Main Line from Relay to Point of Rocks.
VIDEO: Aerials of the scene where the train derailed, killing two college students...
Posted at 12:34 PM ET, 08/21/2012
This story has been updated.
Two killed as CSX train derails in Ellicott City overnight
By Maggie Fazeli Fard and Ashley Halsey
An 80-car CSX train carrying 9,000 tons of coal derailed in downtown Ellicott City overnight, killing two college students who were hanging out near the tracks.
Maryland train derailment witness: ‘I heard a huge crash’
Aerial footage: Train derails outside Baltimore
Story:
Friends mourn students killed in train derailment
Elizabeth Conway Nass and Rose Louese Mayr, both 19, were killed when the eastbound freight train came off the tracks of a 20-foot-tall rail bridge near Main Street in the historic downtown area around midnight.
The two women, both from Ellicott City, apparently were posting to Twitter just before they died. (See below.)
“Drinking on top of the Ellicott City sign,” Nass tweeted before the crash. Tuesday morning, both Nass’ and Mayr’s Twitter accounts were public, but Mayr’s has since been set to private.
Howard County police said that 21 of the train’s 80 cars derailed or overturned about 12 miles outside Baltimore, coming off the tracks that run along the Patapsco River to the east. The train was en route from Grafton,W.Va., to Baltimore.
Verizon has said the train derailment disrupted some land-line service Tuesday morning, the Associated Press also reports. The outage affected some government servers.
The AP reports the problems reached the U.S. Navy base as far as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Lawyers preparing for a Sept. 11 pretrial hearing could not access information stored on government servers, but the connection was restored this afternoon. The company told the Associated Press it is rerouting network traffic to other facilities.
A preliminary investigation indicates that the women were on a walkway alongside the tracks and were crushed by falling coal.
“It was like midnight, I heard the train coming,” recalled Lauren Ward, 23, who lives in a third-floor walk-up apartment in a building about 75 yards from the bridge. “It was really loud screeching. My dresser was shaking in my bedroom. I remember thinking, ‘It derailed.’ ”
In the wreckage, rescue workers found two bodies, later identified as Nass and Mayr.
The Associated Press reports that Nass was a student at James Madison University in Virginia. She made the dean’s list in the fall of 2011 and was a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha’s JMU chapter.
Mayr was a student at the University of Delaware, according to the Associated Press.
Two train operators were on board the train, but neither was injured.
The cause of the derailment remains under investigation. In addition to CSX investigators and Howard County police, National Transportation Safety Board personnel also are on the scene.
According to Jim Southworth, NTSB’s lead investigator, there was a head-in camera on the train. The footage hasn’t been reviewed, and Southworth could not say whether the train struck the women.
It is unknown whether the train operators saw the women on the bridge, but Southworth said there is no indication that they applied the brakes.
When asked whether the women may have caused the accident, Southworth said, “This is an area that we’re looking into very closely — what the operators of the train, the engineer and the conductor, what they saw or didn’t, what the train recorder picked up.”
The 3,000-foot-long train was carrying 9,000 tons of coal and traveling at 25 miles per hour, officials said.
Authorities said one of the train cars fell off the bridge and onto a county-owned lot beneath the tracks, crushing several parked vehicles. Cranes are being brought in to remove the train cars from the vehicles, and investigators are searching for additional victims.
Crews are working to clean up the spilled coal, which also fell into the Patapsco River. Police said no hazardous materials were spilled. The Associated Press reports that about 100 pounds of coal spilled into a tributary of the river, and that more coal lay along the edge of the tributary. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson told AP there are concerns the coal will boost the acidity of the water or threaten aquatic life.
Main Street and Frederick Road are closed from Ellicott City into Baltimore County.
