Dawn hadn’t yet broken on Sept. 9 when Emily Takada, 23, was found dead between two sets of railroad tracks just north of downtown Colorado Springs.
A railroad conductor and an engineer on a northbound BNSF Railway train spotted her body shortly after 4 a.m. near Glen Avenue and West Uintah Street.
Several BNSF trains had been through the area around the time of her death. She was struck by a southbound train and “appeared to have major trauma to most of her body,” police said.
More people have been killed by trains during the past three months in El Paso County than in the entire decade before, officials say, and three of the recent four deaths happened in less than three weeks.
The first — Laura Martin, 33, on June 25 — has been ruled a suicide by the El Paso County Coroner’s Office. The rest, including Takada, remain under investigation.
Investigators believe each person was either suicidal or under the influence of drugs — or both — when they were hit by a train, said police Lt. Howard Black. Three were homeless, he said.
Train-related deaths have been few and far between in El Paso County in recent years.
A person on the tracks was killed in 2013, a worker on duty was killed in 2014 and another person on the tracks was killed in 2015, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) data show. No deaths were reported from 2007 to 2012 or in 2016.
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