Commuter dies under train
2008-05-08
Malané Bosman
THE man was talking on his cell phone. He was obviously upset. And then he flung himself in front of the Cape Town train. That is how distraught commuters described the last moments of Roger Tapelo (35) from Klapmuts on Saturday night. Tapelo was killed instantly when he was struck at 17:33 by the grill of Metro 3530 as it rolled into Huguenot railway station. “The man was standing right next to me,” Ricardo Green recalled. “He was talking to a woman on his cell phone. We could hear that he was upset, al- though we could not understand the African language. “When the train arrived, we all took a step backward, but the man simply turned around so that his back faced the tracks, and then he flung himself in front of the train. It happened right next to me. It was terrible.” The shocked train driver, Nkosinathi Bence 073-649 3006 of Cape Town, brought the train to a stop 80m from the point of impact. It was his first such incident, he said, but it would haunt him forever. Railway security hurried commuters from the platform, out of sight of the gruesome scene. They had to wait for an hour before they could board another train to Cape Town. Police arrived and after the scene was photographed and the train moved to free the victim, Paarl ambulancemen could then step onto the tracks to recover the mutilated body. This past week, Spoornet security officials were deployed at Daljosaphat Station to combat illegal actions along the railway track. Numerous people were arrested for illegally crossing the track and taken to the Paarl Magistrate’s Court. Here they were given the choice of a fine or community service. A spokesperson for MetroRail said that this action is taken to change the behaviour of commuters in the vacinity of railway tracks to enhance their safety.
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