PARIS – Paris police will submit a report on a Thanksgiving Day car-train accident so the District Attorney’s Office can decide whether to charge the driver, Sgt. Michael Dailey said Thursday.
Paul Chamberlain, 62, of Paris was on the Prospect Street railroad crossing at about 5 a.m. Nov. 24 when a 5,000-ton cargo train rammed his car. Dailey said the train crew blew the horn when they saw Chamberlain’s car, but he did not respond. The train was traveling about 25 mph hour at the time, Dailey said, and pushed the car 110 feet down the tracks.
The newspaper carrier was taken to a Lewiston hospital for treatment of broken bones, the officer said, and could not remember being hit by the train.
The possibilities for why Chamberlain did not get out of the way of the train include driver inattention or pure panic, Dailey said.
“I assume he was in the process of crossing the track, saw the train coming, and just stopped because he didn’t know what to do,” Dailey said.
Dailey said there are a number of infractions Chamberlain may have committed, including failure to yield to a train, failure to obey railroad crossing warnings and failure to proceed cautiously across train tracks.
Chamberlain did not return a phone call to the newspaper Thursday.
Comments are no longer available on this story