WASHINGTON — The woman at the controls of a transit train that plowed into another would have done anything to prevent the accident, friends and relatives said Tuesday, a day after the crash killed her and eight others.
Jeanice McMillan was a devoted mom to her college-age son and while she had struggled financially, she loved her job ferrying commuters and tourists around the nation’s capital, those who knew her said.
“If she could have stopped the train, she would have done everything in her power,” said Joanne Harrison, a neighbor at McMillan’s apartment building in Springfield, Va.
McMillan, a Buffalo, N.Y., native, moved to the Washington area about a dozen years ago, her family said. She worked for the U.S. Postal Service for several years before joining the Metropolitan Washington Area Transit Authority in 2007 as a bus driver.
Officials say she became a train operator in March.
Every night before work, McMillan would iron her Metro uniform, Harrison said.
Co-worker Ayesha Thomas said McMillan would often work the late shift and didn’t have a car. If McMillan didn’t have a ride home, she would sleep at Metro’s offices and then take the first train home and come back into work later that day.
“She was a great, humble person,” Thomas said.
The Associated Press
