Bellingham police confirm fatality in train vs. pedestrian incident at Boulevard Park

An unidentified pedestrian died Monday afternoon after being hit by a freight train near the north end of Bellingham’s Boulevard Park.

Bellingham police Sgt. Dennis James confirmed to The Bellingham Herald that the person who was hit by the train had died, but said police were still trying to identify the person.

According to emergency radio traffic at about 3:30 p.m., crews at the scene were asking for a support officer and that responding crews were looking near the South Bay Trail.

The north end of the park and the footpath were blocked off with crime scene tape.

Police were seen searching a backpack found in the area. Burlington Northern Santa Fe personnel and the police department’s crime scene investigation team also were on scene.

James said BNSF investigators had video from onboard the train that would be examined by train and police investigators to determine the cause of the incident.

“We’ve got our crime scene investigator here and we’ve got the traffic unit who investigates it,” James told The Herald. “And part of that is he has to take a look at the evidence here and then determine what it looks like from that end and then the traffic unit will go and work with Burlington Northern, usually they have video on the trains and so they’ll be able to see what happened and then that will direct a lot of the rest of our investigation.

“So until we get those things, I don’t want to speculate until we know more.”

In a tweet, Bellingham police asked community members to avoid the South Bay Trail and that the train was stopped and blocking pedestrian trail access at the north end of the park.

The last fatal train incident in Boulevard Park occurred May 22, 2008, when Maia Haykin, 49, was biking on the South Bay Trail and was hit by an Amtrak train en route to Seattle.

According to Utilities and Transportation Commission statistics, this is the 22nd fatality involving a collision with a train this year in Washington state and the sixth at a railroad crossing. Of those six, five have involved pedestrians.

In 2017, the UTC reported 29 fatal incidents in Washington state involving a train, including eight at railroad crossings.

Whatcom County’s last fatal train incident occurred Oct. 9, 2017, according to the UTC, when a trespassing pedestrian was struck by an Amtrak train south of downtown Bellingham at Pine and Wharf streets.

This story was originally published December 10, 2018 at 4:09 PM.