Simi Valley : Man Hit by Train Had Reportedly Been Drinking

A 23-year-old Simi Valley man whose feet were severed above the ankles by an Amtrak train had been drinking alcohol and bike riding in the Santa Susana Pass tunnel Tuesday night, officials said.

Steve Frye was reported in serious condition in Northridge Hospital Medical Center’s intensive care unit Wednesday. His feet were too mangled to be reattached, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Frye, who had apparently stopped to sleep, was lying on the tracks about 100 feet into the 1 1/2-mile-long tunnel, said Detective Ernie Montagna of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department.

Frye tried to move when the train’s whistle and horn awakened him about 9 p.m., Montagna said.

The westbound passenger train, one engine and seven cars that travel daily from San Diego to Santa Barbara, was a little more than a mile south of the Simi Valley station when its engineer spotted Frye on the tracks, said Clifford Black, a spokesman at Amtrak’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The engineer applied the emergency brakes but could not stop without hitting Frye, Black said.

The accident is at least the second in the tunnel since April, when a 44-year-old Van Nuys man was killed by a westbound Amtrak train.

He also reportedly had been drinking.

“This person should not have been on the railroad tracks, whether on foot or on a bicycle,” Black said of Frye.

“It’s illegal. It’s dangerous.”

Although the tunnel occasionally is a hangout for teen-agers, Montagna said deputies patrol it daily and do not find people there on a regular basis.

Black said he could not supply statistics on the number of people injured or killed in train tunnels but that the structures are a hazard.

“Tunnels and bridges are particularly dangerous to trespass upon because your escape routes are limited,” he said.

“There is no lateral escape from a train that comes down the track because the train occupies virtually all the space provided by the tunnel.”

The train leaves San Diego at 4:45 p.m. daily and usually arrives in Santa Barbara at 10:20 p.m. after several stops.

It was delayed about an hour by the accident, Black said.