Finalist: Staffs of the Miami Herald and WLRN

Brightline death toll surpasses 180, but safeguards are still lacking

By Brittany Wallman, Aaron Leibowitz, Shradha Dinesh, Susan Merriam, Daniel Rivero and Joshua Ceballos

On a steamy summer afternoon in 2017, workers at an office along the railroad tracks in Boca Raton waited for a glimpse of the new Brightline train as it flashed by on a test run. 

Shonda Bambace, an insurance agent, heard the whistle and rushed to see the sleek, yellow passenger train that would roar through South Florida at high speeds. 

And then she saw the girl. 

A young woman with blonde hair was walking toward the tracks. Bambace heard a thud. The train streaked by — and the girl was gone. 

Bambace tried to yell out, but the words wouldn’t come. The girl resembled her own daughter. The blonde hair. The denim shorts. The T-shirt. All familiar. 

“Hit by the train!” she finally screamed. “Hit by the train!” 

Bambace had just witnessed Brightline’s first fatality. Madison “Maddie” Brunelle, 18, who was bipolar and in a manic state, had just walked out of a treatment facility when she turned toward the tracks. 

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Bambace. “I still have dreams about her.” 

Since then, the death toll has climbed at an extraordinary rate. Brightline trains have killed 182 people, significantly more than publicly known, an investigation by the Miami Herald and WLRN, South Florida’s NPR member station, has found. Reporters spent a year combing federal rail data, local medical examiner records and police incident reports to count the dead. Brightline officials did not dispute the finding.

The reporting team found that Brightline has failed to urgently address the train’s dangers, blamed victims for the high death rate, and, as fatalities climbed, turned to the public to pay for safety upgrades. Even then, critical life-saving measures, including fencing along the tracks and suicide-crisis signs, haven’t been installed due to years-long delays in the release of federal funds. 

Local governments and regulators have added to the problem. Deaths have spiked in parts of South Florida where train horns were intentionally silenced after cities and counties demanded “quiet zones” so as not to bother people living near the tracks. But federal regulators have allowed the train-horn bans to stay in place, and cities have resisted closing treacherous railroad crossings. 

Brightline is the nation’s most dangerous passenger train, reporters found, killing someone every 13 days of service, on average. In addition to those deaths, 99 people have been injured. In at least 101 cases, the train crashed into vehicles, but no one was hurt.

The company has not been found at fault for any of the deaths on its tracks. It has faced at least a dozen lawsuits for deaths and injuries, according to court records. None have gone to trial. Some have been settled for undisclosed amounts. I

n a written statement, Michael Lefevre, Brightline’s vice president of operations, reiterated what the company has been saying for years — that the deaths were self-inflicted. 

“These incidents are tragic and avoidable. More than half have been confirmed or suspected suicide — intentional acts of self-harm. All have been the result of illegal, deliberate and oftentimes reckless behavior by people putting themselves in harm’s way.” 

Lefevre said their actions “impact our guests who count on Brightline to get them to work, the theme parks, or special events.” 

Brightline officials say the company has gone to great lengths to warn the public about the dangers of the train and has pushed for stricter enforcement against trespassers and motorists who maneuver around gates. The company has been “a leader in the industry on safety initiatives related to education, enforcement and engineering,” Lefevre said. 

The initiatives didn’t work. Last year, after Brightline extended service through the Treasure Coast to Orlando, 49 people died by the train, the highest number yet. Most of the deaths — 34 of the 49 — occurred in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. 

Contrary to the company’s messaging, the majority of deaths were not ruled suicides. Brightline reviews crash footage and adds “suspected” suicides to its statistics, based in part on whether a person tried to get out of the way. But reporters reviewed autopsy rulings for each case and found the majority of the fatalities were accidents or undetermined. Of the 182 dead, 75 were ruled suicide by local medical examiners — or about 41%. In Broward County, where 61 people have died, 30% were ruled suicide. 

Ninety-one deaths were ruled accidental. Ten were undetermined, and the remaining six rulings are pending.

Before Brightline began commercial service in 2018 as the country’s only private passenger railroad, lawmakers and regulators at the local, state and federal levels sounded the alarm about the risks of running a fast passenger train through one of the most densely populated corridors in Florida. But they ultimately let the project move forward with insufficient safeguards.

As the death toll climbed, millions of taxpayer dollars started flowing to protect the public from Brightline accidents. Lefevre said Brightline has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” on safety improvements, even as the company argues that the dead are at fault.

That argument has won traction on social media. On one popular Instagram account that tracks Brightline deaths, victims are frequently mocked and derided. “The Darwinism Express doing the Universe’s work,” someone commented after a Brightline crash in June. “I’m sorry, but if you get hit by a train, you deserve it,” read a comment after another death in May.

One website attempts to keep a running tally of those “the train hath slain.” Elsewhere, Brightline is sardonically dubbed “Frightline” or “Flatline.”

Public attention is attracted to spectacular crashes — such as the one that ended 46-year-old Clivet Romero’s life. He zigged and zagged his Maserati around cars stopped at the tracks in Oakland Park and sped around a gate. The Brightline impact flung his body into a flashing light signal, and he was sliced in half. His car exploded into a fireball.

But drivers account for relatively few of the fatalities. The Herald/WLRN found that only 24 people — or 13% — were in cars.

Pedestrians are most at risk. The luxury-priced train runs through urban centers, bar districts and neighborhoods. Of the 182 dead, 158 were on foot or bicycle, reporters found.

About 60% of those who died weren’t at crossings, according to federal data. Many didn’t navigate around downed gates or see lights flashing. Official report after report recounts people noticing the Brightline moments before it killed them.

The dead include a woman who fled Ukraine with her husband and young children in 2022 after Russia invaded. Two months into her new Miami life, her last moment was to turn and look in shock at a Brightline train.

Another woman forgot something and ran to retrieve it. On the way to rejoin her group, she tripped on the tracks in the dark. The medical examiner’s report says the train engineer saw “the light of her cell phone tumble forward” as it flew out of her hands, just before she was struck.

The most dangerous train

Brightline remains the deadliest major passenger railroad in the United States, according to a Herald/WLRN analysis of data since 2018 from the Federal Railroad Administration.

It’s a distinction it has held since early on, reported in 2019 by the Associated Press.

Trains that travel above 125 mph are subject to mandatory safeguards, requiring that the tracks be separated from roads and have no traffic crossings. By keeping its speeds under 125 mph along most of the route, Brightline is allowed to run at street level without fencing or separation from pedestrians and cars.

The trains reach 79 mph between Miami and West Palm Beach, and 110 mph farther north to Cocoa. Only the final segment to Orlando, which opened in 2023, travels at speeds up to 125 mph. It is fenced off and inaccessible to cars and pedestrians. No one has died there.

Brightline faces more danger zones than other passenger trains that travel at similar speeds, an analysis of federal rail data found.

The Florida train runs almost entirely at street level, traverses crossings at high speeds, doesn’t sound its horn along much of the route and cuts repeatedly through high-volume intersections.

Ian Savage, a rail-safety expert at Northwestern University, said Brightline’s location makes the train more dangerous. Brightline shares its tracks with freight trains on the Florida East Coast Railway, feet away from major highways such as U.S. 1.

“If you were building this from scratch,” Savage said, “you would never do this.”

‘Stop victim blaming’

In South Florida, where most of the dead were struck, slow freight trains and fast Brightline trains come and go on two parallel tracks, sometimes from opposite directions.

In Brightline’s first week of service, the train struck and killed a man on a bicycle. Jeffrey King, 51, was pedaling home from work at Troy’s Barbecue and tried to beat the train on Ocean Avenue in Boynton Beach.

A video from the front of the train showed King looking straight ahead, unaware of what was coming.

King’s was the fourth Brightline death. Members of Congress demanded answers. Marco Rubio, then a U.S. senator, called for a federal review of the train’s safety record.

U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fort Pierce, rejected Brightline’s public comments that people like King should simply heed safety warnings at the crossings.

“Stop victim blaming and take responsibility for the fact that your trains are killing people,” Mast tweeted at the time, sharing a story about King’s death. “Trains should stop running until massive safety flaws are resolved.”

The company’s president, Patrick Goddard, told a congressional committee in April 2018 that those claiming the train was unsafe “choose to ignore the facts and the actual police reports surrounding these incidents, a common theme of bending information to suit their anti-progress narrative.”

“Every person who has died on our railroad has either chosen to end their lives or been under the influence of drugs,” he said.

Two of the six deaths by then were ruled suicides. The rest of the victims tested positive for drugs, but it’s unclear whether that played any role in their deaths. King had marijuana in his system, but the Palm Beach County medical examiner’s office told the Herald/WLRN team that it’s impossible to know whether he was impaired, based on his toxicology results.

In public statements, the company has combined suicides and cases where a person had drugs in their system, claiming in 2020 that 75% of deaths were “the results of suicide or drugs.”

The suggestion that most Brightline fatalities were self-inflicted baffles the brother of Randy Johanson, a 62-year-old whose gruesome death last year occurred at the Barefoot Boulevard railroad crossing in Micco, north of Vero Beach.

Johanson was having a typical day. He walked to the Winn-Dixie liquor store, bought a few tiny, black-cherry-infused whiskey bottles and headed toward home.

It wasn’t far. But he would have to cross the tracks, and a train he had never heard of was whizzing along at 102 miles an hour.

Johanson was deaf — he had measles as a child. At home beside his bed, he had left his hearing aids. His uneaten lunch, ramen noodles, sat on the counter.

He walked past the warning gate and was just across the tracks when the train hit him, video shows. Trains extend beyond the track about three feet on each side, and a second or two would have made a difference. The engineer noted Johanson “was kind of like shuffling, and didn’t look up at us.”

Johanson’s brother, Daniel, a retired Lockheed Martin engineer, choked up during an interview at his Melbourne home in March as he cut into a sealed brown envelope marked as biohazard. He had been holding onto it for a year, avoiding it. He used the scissors as tongs, pulling out his brother’s blood-spattered ID cards and wallet. Remembering how the train “decimated” his brother’s body, he said he just doesn’t understand.

“My thought, being an engineer,” he said, “is that you pre-plan your projects, and you consider all those safety issues … before you start running a train at 110 miles an hour through small towns where people aren’t even aware of what’s going on.”

Randy Johanson’s death initially was ruled a suicide by the Brevard County Medical Examiner’s Office, then changed to “undetermined.” Daniel Johanson said his brother loved fishing and watching reruns of “M*A*S*H.” Randy’s death was not a suicide, he said.

“I think it’s a travesty that they would even make that supposition, you know, without any evidence to support that,” he said.

‘Never looked up’

Danny Black, a photographer, was crossing the tracks in North Miami in the fall of 2023 when he was hit by a Brightline train.

The train conductor told police that Black, 55, was wearing headphones and “never looked up or seemed to know that the train was approaching.”

Black’s home was a few blocks away. He was walking east, to an area with restaurants and a Publix. He had taken up jogging to lose weight. He loved NASCAR. He was “a wonderful man,” his sister Jody McDonald said, crying, in an interview at her Canaveral Groves home in March.

A neighborhood road abuts the tracks, and a path through the grass shows Black wasn’t the first to trespass in a location where there was no official crossing.

Brightline’s tracks run near schools, parks and neighborhoods. Homeless encampments have sprung up. Well-worn trespassing paths are evident throughout the route.

For Black, using the official crossing would have added several blocks to his trek. In one cul-de-sac in Palm Beach Gardens, pedestrians trying to get to a neighborhood mall would have to take a 1.5-mile detour to get to the nearest official crossing.

“If anything else killed that many people, they would take it away,” McDonald said. “Whatever they’re doing isn’t working.”

Even if there’s a well-worn path, walking onto the tracks if you’re not at an official crossing is trespassing in Florida, a misdemeanor. Brightline officials emphasize that people such as Black were breaking the law. Trespassing is frequent along the Florida East Coast Railway tracks that Brightline shares, a problem that the Florida Department of Transportation detailed in a 2021 report.

Brightline was warned of the risk years earlier. The FEC railroad, which birthed the city of Miami and many others along Florida’s eastern seaboard, was one of the nation’s most treacherous rail corridors going back decades. In 2016 and 2017, just before Brightline launched, 54 people were killed by FEC freight trains, according to federal data. It was the railroad’s deadliest two-year stretch since at least 1975.

FEC freight trains, which travel at slower speeds, have killed 132 people since 2018, a fatality rate of 13 deaths per million miles. Brightline’s rate, about 24 deaths per million miles, far outpaces that.

Despite the corridor’s deadly history, Brightline spent years disputing the need for safety upgrades and downplaying warnings from local governments and regulators, reporters found.

Frank Frey, a Federal Railroad Administration engineer, was part of a team of regulators and railroad officials who walked the Brightline route in 2014 during a federal review process. In a subsequent report, Frey warned that trespassing across the tracks had reached “epidemic” proportions.

Frey urged Brightline to install fencing to direct pedestrians to crossings, and he called on the company to add crossing-gate arms and median dividers north of West Palm Beach to deter drivers from going around gates where trains would exceed 80 mph. Brightline resisted.

“[T]hey are not exercising appropriate safety practices and reasonable care,” Frey wrote in the report.

After Frey’s report became public, and amid pressure from Martin and Indian River counties, FDOT — the agency responsible for rail safety in Florida — said it would require Brightline to follow the federal guidance.

But those safety measures only applied to the 110-mph span of track that opened in late 2023 north of West Palm Beach. Crossing upgrades were less common in the South Florida counties (Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade), where most of the deaths occur.

About 100 crossings have just two gate arms, one on each side of the tracks, which means drivers can still veer into the wrong lane to drive across. Brightline officials say the remaining 69% of the 331 crossings have four gate arms, and some have median dividers to keep people from driving into the other lane.

State bills introduced in 2017, 2018 and 2020 would have expanded FDOT’s authority to regulate Brightline, and would have required the rail company to pay for fencing at popular trespassing shortcuts and for safety equipment at crossings. Brightline opposed the bills — and each time, the legislation died without reaching a floor vote.

Brightline argued that the bills improperly targeted the company and weren’t needed.

The company was arguing against stricter fencing requirements. Rusty Roberts, then a Brightline official, said it was ineffective, expensive and difficult to maintain. Brightline officials recently told reporters that fencing that the company installed near the Aventura station has been knocked down three times.

But in 2022, when a federal grant offering millions of dollars for fencing became available, Brightline was on board. FDOT submitted an application, with Brightline’s support.

Now, company officials say fencing, though not a “cure-all,” is a good idea. Lefevre, the vice president of operations, recently called it “common sense” and said it would have an “immediate impact.”

“When done in the right area and with the proper length, fencing can be a benefit to channel pedestrians to the nearest crossing,” Lefevre said in a statement.

Under terms of the grant, Brightline will spend $10 million on safeguards, while federal and state governments will spend $35 million. That will pay for 33 miles of protective fencing and landscaping along the tracks, warning markings at crossings, and 168 crisis-support signs for people who are suicidal.

In the 33 months before the funding was released, 101 people died.

The U.S. Department of Transportation blamed the delay on a “grant backlog” from the Biden administration. In a statement to the Herald/WLRN, spokesman Nate Sizemore said the Federal Railroad Administration “has worked to hold Brightline ... accountable to the highest standards.” He said drivers and trespassing pedestrians were “the direct cause” of all of Brightline’s fatalities.

“We will continue to closely review any safety incident with Brightline and work with the railroad to prevent future occurrences,” Sizemore said.

Brightline declined to provide information to the Herald/WLRN on exactly how much of the nearly 200-mile route between Miami and Cocoa is currently protected by fencing, vegetation or other barriers. The tracks are easily accessible in most of South Florida.

In April, reporters visited the stretch of track where Maddie Brunelle died eight years ago in Boca Raton. It was still unfenced.

Maddie was an artist, an A student who had been admitted to college. But she was in a personal crisis. That afternoon in 2017, she walked out of a recovery center in Boca Raton, and, just a few blocks away, saw the open tracks.

Her mother, Amy, told reporters that getting to the tracks was too easy. Suicide can be an impulsive act, she noted, and the Brightline train runs past communities of “vulnerable” people.

According to FDOT, the FEC/Brightline tracks are surrounded by “disadvantaged communities” and “areas of persistent poverty.”

“What scares me is how much open track there is,” Brunelle said, “and how close it is to public areas.”

Experts say barriers and other measures can help. At San Francisco’s Golden Gate and Tampa’s Sunshine Skyway bridges, safety netting, fencing, signs and emergency call boxes have curbed suicides.

’Should be permanently closed!’

As she inched her Honda forward at a railroad crossing in North Miami in March 2023, a young mother made a terrible mistake. Traffic wasn’t moving. The gates came down in front of her, and she was stuck on the tracks. A Brightline train was coming.

The 28-year-old had only seconds to decide what to do. She flung the door open, grabbed her 2-year-old son out of the back seat, left the car that she had just bought that day, and ran.

The train slammed into her car 42 seconds later.

The crossing at 141st Street and U.S. 1 is one of the most dangerous along the Brightline route. At least seven times, Brightline trains have crashed into cars, mostly after drivers have scrambled to exit before impact.

Officials have discussed closing the crossing to traffic for years, so cars would no longer be able to drive across the tracks. In a 2023 email, Frey, the federal rail official, said regulators “pleaded with City officials to close this, but sadly the City declined.”

“There is absolutely no reason why this crossing should exist,” Frey wrote. “It should be permanently closed!”

The 141st Street crossing is one of nearly two dozen that regulators recommended for closure more than 10 years ago. All of them remain open today.

A key reason the Brightline corridor is so dangerous, reporters found, is the prevalence of crossings and local officials’ resistance to closing them.

“There are things that could be done to reduce the number of crossings and therefore the number of interactions between the railroad and the public,” Brightline’s Lefevre said. “It is not for lack of effort or interest on Brightline’s part that those things aren’t being done.”

Amit Bose, who led the Federal Railroad Administration under then-President Joe Biden, said in a recent interview that he walked some of the Brightline corridor and “couldn’t believe the number of grade crossings.”

“I knew the numbers, but just seeing it for myself, and seeing it, you know, every quarter-mile, half-mile continuously in these populated areas,” he said, “it definitely made my antenna go up.”

In other states, railroads and governments have invested billions of dollars in fencing, upgraded crossings, pedestrian bridges and other projects to prevent cars and people from accessing train tracks.

In Florida, where three passenger railroads rank among the deadliest in the country, even basic safeguards such as sounding a horn have not been deployed.

Normally, trains are required to blow their horns in a standardized pattern — two long blasts, one short blast and another long blast — as they approach crossings. Before approving communities to become quiet zones, federal regulators require them to add safety equipment to account for the danger of keeping horns silent.

In 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration took the rare step of reviewing Broward County’s quiet zone amid a spike in deaths at Brightline crossings.

Among those who had been killed was a homeless man who had just been handed a $1 bill in an area of open track not far from a “No Train Horn” sign in Pompano Beach. The man who gave it to him turned back a moment later to see him flying through the air. The $1 bill floated to the ground.

The federal agency determined that Broward could keep its quiet zone if additional safety measures were taken and awarded a $15 million grant to upgrade 21 crossings throughout the county. That was two years ago; the grant agreement was signed in May.

The Florida transportation department has done little to address Brightline’s safety record. Jared Perdue, the agency’s director since 2022, declined repeated interview requests.

In response to detailed written questions, an agency spokesperson offered a general statement that blamed the public.

“Data shows that the leading cause of rail-related fatalities at railroad crossings in the U.S. is human behavior and this shows true in Florida statistics as well,” said the spokesperson, Michael Williams.

FDOT has invested nearly $180 million over the past decade to “enhance the safety of rail crossings around the state,” Williams said. The funding included a $60 million initiative to paint white Xs known as “dynamic envelopes” at the approach to each crossing.

Williams did not respond to repeated requests for a list of completed projects.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who expressed concern in 2019 over Brightline’s death toll, did not respond to reporters’ requests for comment.

Death on the tracks

The day after Christmas, a Brightline train loaded with 236 passengers was rolling north from Miami to Orlando when a woman in gray braids stepped onto the tracks.

Amelise Renoir Noel was walking home from her job at a catering company.

The horn sounded, but Noel stumbled. She couldn’t get out of the way.

Inside the train cab, the crew members knew they wouldn’t be able to stop in time. There wasn’t even time to pull the emergency brake, the conductor told investigators.

Brightline reported to federal regulators that the crew had “observed a trespasser standing, fouling their track.”

Noel’s death, ruled an accident, threw many into mourning. Friends, co-workers and family packed every pew at the Bethlehem Haitian Baptist Church for her funeral. It spanned two and a half hours. A brass band marched up the aisle.

Noel was 60 but seemed more like a 20-year-old, said her daughter-in-law, Elmide Dictant. For years, she had walked that route to and from work, across the tracks. Though it was technically trespassing, Noel would have had to walk out of her way to reach an official crossing. Her home was minutes from the tracks in Lake Park in northern Palm Beach County.

A wife, mother and grandmother, Noel “loved dancing,” Dictant remembered. “She loved making jokes, she loved to cook and loved making Haitian snacks.”

Noel’s death was the third in a two-year span for the young conductor in the train cab. None of them were her fault. The first time, she was so “in shock” she couldn’t tell police what happened, according to a report. Three months later, it happened again. A woman was walking between the tracks with her head down. Then, Noel’s death.

In March, she was in the locomotive cab when the train hit a fourth person, a thin, young man homesick for Ecuador.

He held his arms out, a deputy wrote, “as if he was welcoming the train to strike him.”

After each of the 182 deadly strikes, a similar scene unfolds.

The train stops. A crowd of officials descends on the tracks. Investigators pick through the gravel, collecting remnants of a life lost: A pinky finger, a zippered bag that says “fabulous,” a wedding ring. A head, a heart, a pair of jeans.

Engineers emerge to see that the front of the train is dented. Once, the train impaled a couple’s pickup truck, pinning them against the train’s nose.

Investigators’ records chronicle the collateral damage. Loved ones show up. A witness “with red and watery eyes” has to compose himself to tell officers what he saw. A boyfriend rides up on a bicycle and begins “sobbing uncontrollably.”

Eventually, a body-removal company collects what’s beneath the tarp.

Inside the train, where commuters are in a hurry to get somewhere, the shades are drawn down.

Will Mann, a Brightline passenger during a March fatality in Palm Beach County, told reporters that free potato chips and water were distributed while riders sat for three hours waiting, wondering. They couldn’t see outside.

They were told there had been an “incident,” he said, involving a “trespasser.” They got no further details.

The train had struck a woman, Christy Mateluna, who died at a hospital in West Palm Beach.

After her body was removed and the train finally got going, Mann said, passengers around him started clapping.

Anyone who is experiencing suicidal thoughts should contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) or Crisis Text Line (text “HELLO” to 741741) for immediate support. Regular check-ins with primary care physicians and clergy members, who often have insights into community resources, can also be beneficial.

How the Miami Herald and WLRN found Brightline’s death toll

A team of reporters from the Miami Herald and WLRN spent over a year documenting every death involving Brightline trains since the rail line’s launch seven years ago. Drawing on autopsy reports and local law enforcement records, reporters discovered that 182 people — so far — have been killed by the fast-speed train.

The team of reporters analyzed federal railroad data, reviewed federal safety studies, consulted experts and reviewed hundreds of pages of medical examiner and police incident reports to better understand the factors that contributed to each death and to compare Brightline’s safety record against other railroads nationwide.

Read the full methodology here.

Credits

Credits Brittany Wallman | Investigative Reporter 

Aaron Leibowitz | Local Government Reporter 

Daniel Rivero | Investigative Reporter, WLRN 

Joshua Ceballos | Local Government Accountability Reporter, WLRN 

Shradha Dinesh | Data Journalist 

Allison Beck | Intern, Ida B. Wells Society 

Susan Merriam | Data/Visual Journalist 

David Newcomb | Director of Editorial Project Experiences 

Sohail Al-Jamea | 3-D Modeling, Animation and Video Journalist 

Rachel Handley | Visual Journalist 

Matias J. Ocner | Photo Journalist 

David Santiago | Photo Editor 

John Parkhurst | Copy Editor 

Carolina Zamora | Audience & Engagement 

Jessica Bakeman | Director of Enterprise Journalism, WLRN 

Jessica Lipscomb | City Editor 

Trish Wilson Belli | Investigations Editor

Support

The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided support for this series.

A conductor landed his dream job. Then people started dying.

By Brittany Wallman and Susan Merriam

There was nothing Darren Brown could do to save the man who dove headfirst in front of his train.

The Brightline was traveling at 79 miles an hour when Brown, the train’s conductor, saw him. But trains don’t stop quickly. Brown told the engineer to hit the brakes, and they watched as the man disappeared under the train’s nose.

Brown can’t keep these incidents straight in his mind. But he thinks this death — of Dennis Conrad, a 67-year-old retiree in Hollywood — was his first.

When the train stopped, Brown followed protocol. He climbed down out of the cab and laid his eyes on a grisly scene spread over several hundred yards.

After investigators questioned him, Brown resumed the train’s journey toward Miami. That’s when he heard the railroad sensor announce that a second Brightline train was approaching the fatality. All train traffic there was supposed to stop while first responders combed the tracks for body parts and personal items.

There’d been a communication breakdown. The second Brightline train “suddenly approached” at maximum speed, an official record of the incident recounted. Everyone ran for their lives.

The train ran over Conrad a second time.

Darren Brown was no rookie. Railroad work was in his family. He’d worked for Union Pacific back in Chicago. But that wasn’t this.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2018. Brown would see two more men die by Christmas.

Darren Brown’s experience with death might be uncommon in the world of transit, but not in the world of Brightline.

Brightline train crews confront violent deaths on a regular basis. Their experiences, their suffering, are part of the long debris trail of the nation’s deadliest major passenger rail system.

Fire, smoke, a news helicopter circling overhead, a coroner, scattered body parts, crying witnesses, screaming family members, a train full of passengers recording your every move with their phones.

It changes a person.

On any given day, the tracks — mostly unfenced and crossing over hundreds of roadways — attract all sorts of people who don’t belong there. Most of them are on foot. Most are between crossings, where there are no gates, no bells and few signs. People walking to work, or church, or headed home from the bar, cutting across the tracks. People not paying attention at all. People like this retiree, wanting to end it.

Brown got his first railroad job in Chicago when he was 19. He built muscle on the Union Pacific Railroad, pulling levers, throwing switches, assembling freight trains. Then he moved into the train cab, making good money. He had done both jobs: engineer, physically controlling the train; and conductor, overseeing everything.

Once you get out of Chicago on a freight train, miles of cornfields surround the tracks. In the city, the train is elevated and, in some locations, fenced. To hit someone is rare. It’s only happened to his father, a train engineer, four times over 35 years.

Darren and his brother both went into railroad work.

Darren liked the feeling of chugging along inside the train cab. It can be exhilarating. Blowing the horn cadence: two long, one short and one long.

He was drawn to Florida by Brightline — to be part of something exciting, a new, fast train, privately owned, luxury on wheels.

He was incredibly proud to be, as he called it, a “badass bullet train conductor.”

Brown has a celebrity spirit about him. He posts frequently on social media. In 2017, when he got the call from Brightline, he was on a reality TV show, “The Spouse House.”

He’d be moving to West Palm Beach. He’d become a father, with a boy named Force, as in “may the force be with you.” He’d be conducting the bright yellow Brightline trains as they launched in 2018 at 79 miles an hour in South Florida, and later hitting 125 miles an hour on the leg to Orlando.

Brown decided to find out how many people he had struck. He had no idea what his morbid statistic would be. He asked the people at Brightline.

“Fourteen,” he said they told him. And then there was another death. And another.

“What’s your body count?” someone on Instagram asked Brown last year. “16,” he responded, like he was providing his shirt size.

Brightline told the Miami Herald on Wednesday that its records show Brown was involved in six fatalities. The Herald/WLRN documented eight.

The son of a U.S. Marine, it strikes him that he has seen more death than some soldiers have.

If I stay here, he wondered, what will my body count be?

‘Is there something I could have done’

He looks like my brother.

Darren Brown remembers looking at the body and thinking that.

He looks like David. The thought haunted him.

Brown was conducting the Brightline when it hit cars, barely missed dogs, surprised people on foot.

People were always trying to beat the train.

When they didn’t make it across in time, body parts were collected into a bag, or sometimes, carted off on a stretcher. Brown didn’t know names, dates or even who lived and who died. He had long since lost count of how many men and women he had run over.

But this guy looked like his brother.

“I broke down.”

It wasn’t his fault. But self-doubt enveloped him after these incidents.

Was I looking down at my notebook? Could we have hit the brakes sooner?

By Aaron Leibowitz, Daniel Rivero and Susan Merriam

From the beginning, Brightline sold Floridians a dream.

Passenger trains would make a triumphant return to Henry Flagler’s 130‑year‑old rail corridor along the east coast of Florida.

Finally, there would be a fast, comfortable alternative to driving between Miami and Orlando — and it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a penny.

“It’s not publicly funded at all,” Brightline executive Michael Reininger said at a 2017 congressional hearing. “It’s completely an investment of private‑sector capital.”

But despite the company’s claim to be the country’s “first new privately funded passenger rail service in a century,” the luxury train has been boosted by nearly a half-billion taxpayer dollars, an investigation by the Miami Herald and South Florida NPR member station WLRN found.

Reporters identified $486 million in public money directed to Brightline-related projects, a figure that includes funds for Brightline itself as well as money granted to state and local agencies.

About one-fifth of the total has been for safety initiatives, largely in response to an epidemic of fatalities that make Brightline the deadliest major passenger train in the country. More than one-quarter of the funding has been set aside for Brightline stations that were not in the company’s original plans but have been requested by communities.

Today, the private company that promised to be “financially viable on its own” is losing money — and using government subsidies to grow its business. At Brightline’s request, a $33 million federal grant was awarded this year to help it add new railroad cars, lengthening the train from five railcars to seven. The grant, Brightline said in a financial report, will help the company “offset operating costs associated with its expansion of service.”

Brightline now acknowledges it is relying on government safety grants that will amount to tens of millions of dollars in the coming years. At a congressional hearing in June, Brightline senior adviser Husein Cumber went as far as to warn lawmakers: “My fear is if you pull back on funding, you would also see an increase in safety incidents.”

Patrick Goddard, Brightline Florida’s CEO, disputed the Herald/WLRN’s findings, calling the $486 million figure a “gross mischaracterization.” In many cases, the company said, it wasn’t Brightline that applied for public money and the funding didn’t “directly benefit” Brightline.

Brightline said two big-ticket items totaling $200 million shouldn’t count: a $130 million grant to replace a railroad bridge in the city of Stuart — where boaters complained that Brightline trains were crossing so often it was backing up traffic on the water — and $70 million to build a platform at Brightline’s downtown Miami station to connect with a public train system. In both cases, Brightline said the improvements benefited the broader community.

Brightline’s original proposal was a route from Miami to Orlando, with stops in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Stations in Aventura and Boca Raton were added later at the request of local governments. Future stops are planned in Martin County and Cocoa, and an extension from Orlando to Tampa is in the works.

The company emphasized that it invested more than $6 billion to build out the “original scope” of its rail line, including the trains, track improvements and the four initial stations.

“The Herald is trying to make Brightline look nefarious or that we have not come through on our promises,” Goddard said in an email. “We made this investment.”

When Reininger told federal lawmakers in 2017 that the project was “not publicly funded at all,” the company said, he was referring specifically to “the original scope of the corridor” and the fact that Brightline “would be responsible for the long-term operations” of the train.

Reporters were unable to identify past instances in which Brightline made clear that additional costs could be shouldered by taxpayers.

The Herald and WLRN scoured local, state and federal spending records to calculate the total amount of public funding directed to Brightline-related projects.

But the death toll keeps climbing.

Running fast trains at street level through some of the densest areas of South Florida has led to 193 people being killed since 2017.

Mario Lopez, whose brother David was killed by a Brightline train in 2019, said he has long been mystified that the train can operate in such a crowded corridor and at such high speeds.

His brother was walking over the tracks with his dog Roku in Hollywood one afternoon as a train was approaching. The conductor blew the horn, but David seemed to notice the train only moments before it hit him. He let go of his dog’s leash, saving Roku’s life, and had started to run forward when the Brightline struck him at 73 mph.

Six years after his brother was killed, Mario Lopez said he understands that David’s death was an accident — but an “accident that shouldn’t happen … if there was more money invested into safety measures.”

Much of the public money that has been allocated for safety has been held up by red tape, reporters found. Even as the deaths have persisted, Brightline has waited years for the federal government to pay out tens of millions of dollars in safety grants for critical measures like fencing and warning signs.

The Harrison Street rail crossing where David Lopez was killed remains among the most dangerous in Florida, according to collision data.

Two busy roads run next to the tracks on either side. The surrounding blocks are dotted with apartments, restaurants, bars and several schools.

Since David’s death, three more people, all on foot, have died in Brightline strikes at the same location.

In December 2021, 25-year-old Luke Naumiuk, an employee at Chewy, ran into the path of the train. His death was ruled an accident.

The following month, Jerry Santomaso, a 66-year-old, was struck and killed as he darted across the tracks. His death was also ruled an accident.

At the end of 2022, Kristo David Leon, 36, who’d been released from jail and sent on a bus back to Broward County, tried to beat the train but was struck and killed. His death, too, was ruled an accident.

Mario Lopez said it pains him to see the “normalization” of repeated Brightline deaths.

“What makes me more angry is that it keeps happening,” he said. “It’s ludicrous.”

’A huge difference in cost’

When Mario Lopez first moved to South Florida in 2014, the New York transplant was surprised to see that trains ran at street level, right through city centers. A few years later, when Brightline started running its fast trains on the same tracks, he was floored.

“I personally was like, this is BS,” he recalled. “Like, why is this coming through the city?”

But that setup was part of Brightline’s plan — to save money by running its trains through the existing Florida East Coast rail corridor that Flagler had built in the late 1800s.

Brightline would pay to upgrade the tracks to accommodate its faster trains, but it would be spared the massive expense of building out the entire route from scratch. The company was also counting on making money by developing real estate around the stations in downtown Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

Today, Brightline runs on wide open, mostly unfenced tracks through urban communities and across busy roads — something that federal regulations allow because the trains don’t exceed 125 mph. Brightline goes 79 mph from Miami to West Palm Beach and only reaches 125 mph along its final stretch from Cocoa to Orlando.

Wes Edens, a billionaire investor who is Brightline’s founder, said in 2018 that running a true high-speed train in Florida was not feasible.

“If you want to really go high speed … you basically have to build a bridge for 250 miles that you then put a train on,” he said. “That sounds hard, and it sounds expensive, and it’s both of those things.”

Brightline’s decision to use the existing rail corridor rather than building out new tracks above street level made for “a huge difference in cost,” Edens said.

But to some observers, the regular deaths that followed came as no surprise.

“It was virtually impossible to mitigate the problems that were inherent,” said Susan Mehiel, founder of the Alliance for Safe Trains advocacy group, which opposed the Brightline project. “Everybody knew that from the start.”

In the lead-up to Brightline’s launch, local governments sparred with the company over who should pay to address those baked-in safety problems.

County governments on Florida’s Treasure Coast filed lawsuits challenging the rail project, arguing, among other things, that the company needed to do more to improve safety.

At a 2018 congressional hearing, Goddard — Brightline’s then-president — said the company had gone “above and beyond” what was legally required. He said the opposition came from “narrow-minded residents” pushing an “anti-progress narrative.”

Two counties, Martin and Indian River, ultimately reached settlements in which Brightline agreed to invest millions of dollars into safety infrastructure.

Still, in the absence of clear regulations about who is financially responsible for making the tracks safer, too much of the burden to pay for life-saving measures has fallen to the public, said Todd Baker, an attorney who represents the families of several people who’ve been killed by Brightline trains.

“The taxpayers don’t want to pay for Brightline to run a safer train,” Baker said. “That should be what Brightline does.”

Paying to keep trains quiet

The first public money related to Brightline came several years before the trains began running.

In South Florida, where entire cities had been built around Flagler’s train tracks, local leaders worried that repeated horn noise from the fast new train running 32 times a day would disturb neighborhoods.

Communities along the route requested “quiet zones,” where the train would not need to sound its horn as it approached crossings, though it could still be blown in emergency situations. Local governments would have to add gate arms and medians at crossings to meet federal requirements to keep train horns silent.

But there was uncertainty over who would pay.

Local governments feared the burden would fall on them. Decades-old agreements said cities should cover the maintenance costs at crossings. South Florida transit agencies that receive federal funds began setting aside money for crossing improvements.

In 2014, Brightline agreed to put up $60 million for the crossing upgrades.

The state also agreed to chip in, with the Florida Legislature allocating $10 million to help communities become quiet zones.

But then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed the funding, saying it hadn’t gone through the proper vetting process. Scott, who had rejected $2.4 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in 2011, was adamant that there would be “no state subsidies” for the Brightline project.

Nonetheless, state funding for quiet zones began flowing in 2015. The Florida Department of Transportation has allocated a total of $32 million for safety measures related to Brightline over the past decade, according to a Herald/WLRN review of state contract records.

Deaths in South Florida’s quiet zones spiked after Brightline was introduced. In many of the incidents, including David Lopez’s death, conductors have blown the horns once they saw people on the tracks. But by that time, it’s often too late for the trains to stop or for people to jump out of the way.

After the federal government started to review the rise in deaths in Broward County’s quiet zone in 2022, some in the rail industry said it was clear that trains needed to start sounding their horns.

Keeping the quiet zone intact would be “a reckless act that fails to prioritize the safety of our members or the public at large,” said a union representing freight-railway workers on the tracks shared with Brightline. Public-awareness campaigns and added safety equipment at crossings were not enough to keep people safe, the union argued in a memo at the time, particularly given Florida’s large international and tourist populations.

“It doesn’t matter where you come from, you know what the horn of a train means,” Andres Trujillo, the union’s legislative director in Florida, told the Herald/WLRN. “You don’t need education, you don’t need translations.”

At the Harrison Street crossing where David Lopez died, there was no routine train horn because the Hollywood intersection is in Broward County’s quiet zone.

Some additional safety measures have been installed there since 2019, thanks, in part, to a federal grant. Bollards were erected along the edge of each lane to direct drivers away from the tracks. A sign reading “No Train Horn” was added near the crossing.

But other safety measures are still on hold.

In 2021, the Florida Department of Transportation recommended adding fencing, hedges and other barriers to make it harder for people to cross the tracks at certain spots along the Brightline corridor. Among them was a five-mile stretch between Hollywood and Aventura — including the area around Harrison Street.

The state was awarded a federal grant for fencing throughout the corridor in 2022. But the money wasn’t released until this year due to government delays.

The fencing still hasn’t been installed.

‘We don’t want any more fatalities’

Six people had died by the time the Brightline station in downtown Miami opened in May of 2018. The company had only been welcoming riders since that January, but lawmakers were already calling the situation an “emergency.”

“We don’t want any more fatalities,” U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens, told WLRN at the grand opening.

Wilson urged the federal government to quickly release funding that Brightline was seeking for safety improvements at dozens of railroad crossings.

A $2.3 million federal grant for those improvements was awarded in 2019. Brightline agreed to contribute $1.4 million toward the effort, and local governments chipped in $1.5 million.

Brightline didn’t complete the safety measures until 2023. The company told reporters that “the process was disrupted by a government shutdown but otherwise proceeded through the normal, rigorous federal grant agreement process.”

Seventy-eight people were killed by Brightline trains in the interim.

That grant was the first in a parade of federal safety subsidies to try to stop the deaths: $25 million to put fences around the tracks and upgrade crossings, $15 million to add raised medians and extra gate arms in Broward County, $5 million to improve crossing safety in Brevard County.

Mike Arias, a retired transportation officer for Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and an advocate for roadway safety, said that Brightline, as a private company, should have invested in more comprehensive safety upgrades before starting service instead of waiting for government grants.

“The public on a daily basis is subjected to this high, unnecessary risk,” Arias said. “There’s been no accountability on their safety record at all.”

Amy Brunelle, whose daughter Madison died by suicide in 2017 in the very first Brightline fatality, said Brightline should have done more early on to make the corridor safer.

“They should have done it from the get-go,” Brunelle said. “Would it have alleviated all of these tragic deaths? No, but it probably would have prevented quite a few.”

Some rail advocates say that, while the safety record of Brightline is a concern, even more government funding should be provided to address it. For railroads across the United States, public dollars are a key source of safety infrastructure.

“It is, without question in my mind, a government issue that needs to be taken care of by all levels of government,” said Rick Harnish, the executive director of the High Speed Rail Alliance, a Chicago-based advocacy group. Florida spends billions every year on highways and roads, Harnish said, and should similarly subsidize Brightline and invest in rail safety.

But other transit advocates aren’t so sure. Brightline isn’t providing enough of a public benefit to warrant public dollars, they say, pointing to pricey tickets that make the train inaccessible for most local residents. The average one-way fare on Brightline from South Florida to Orlando is more than $70, while rides within South Florida typically cost around $27.

This year, the Federal Railroad Administration gave Brightline the $33 million to add new train cars so it could sell more tickets. In a January press release, Brightline said the money would allow it to sell cheaper tickets in bulk, easing the cost burden for frequent commuters within South Florida.

But when the commuter pass was rolled out, the bulk ticket deal cost $899 for 40 rides, more than twice as much as a previous package. Facing backlash, the company lowered the price, but ride costs still increased by 50%.

The case is emblematic of what should not happen when public money is given to private companies, said Cathy Dos Santos, executive director of the advocacy group Transit Alliance Miami.

“Public funding should come with a public benefit,” Dos Santos said.

‘Public-private partnership’

Brightline says it has delivered on its private-funding promise by building out its “original corridor” with track upgrades and stations in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Orlando.

But costs beyond that have increasingly fallen to taxpayers, the Herald/WLRN’s analysis found.

To build the Brightline station in Aventura, Miami-Dade County covered the $72 million cost.

For its station in Boca Raton, Brightline paid $30 million but was helped by a $16 million federal grant and $10 million from the city to build a parking garage.

Farther north in Stuart, city officials backed out of a station deal last year. Commissioners complained that the city would be on the hook for half of the $60 million price tag without a significant funding commitment from Brightline. One commissioner called the deal “an agreement where Brightline has no skin in the game.”

Brightline officials say it makes sense for taxpayers to help subsidize stops that benefit their communities. Cities like Aventura and Boca Raton have “recognized the value of integrating Brightline service and proactively pursued station development,” said Goddard, the Brightline Florida CEO.

The company made a similar case about the use of $70 million of city and county money to build a platform for public Tri-Rail trains to connect with Brightline’s MiamiCentral station. That spending helps the public, not Brightline, Goddard told the Herald/WLRN.

“Regional leaders recognized that building a train station in downtown Miami is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and contributed funds to add Tri-Rail platform/tracks and the necessary structure and common areas to support them, none of which are of benefit to Brightline,” he said.

But Brightline could stand to benefit, too. When Tri-Rail began service to MiamiCentral last year, Brightline acknowledged that the two systems would share riders, saying they were “complementary.”

The connection might also assist in a planned expansion of public train service from MiamiCentral, a service that Tri-Rail could seek to operate. Because Brightline has the exclusive rights to run passenger rail on the tracks, the deal could mean a $330 million influx of public dollars for the private company, according to a 2024 bond-offering document.

If the commuter rail plan goes through, it would be a major win for Brightline as it faces an uncertain financial future.

Brightline Florida has so far reported huge operating losses, to the tune of $153 million in 2024. Even as its ridership increased from 2.1 million in 2023 to 2.8 million last year, the company lost about $55 per passenger.

Brightline also has more than $5 billion in outstanding debt, some of which is backed by the anticipated county payments for the commuter rail deal.

The company saw its bond ratings reduced to “junk” status this year and spooked investors in July by announcing it would defer an interest payment. Since it began passenger service, Brightline has lost a cumulative $1.8 billion, including over a half-billion dollars in 2024 alone, according to a Herald/WLRN analysis of its public financial reports.

At a June Senate hearing about the future of rail in the United States, lawmakers lauded Brightline as a potential model for the industry. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was among those eager to learn more about “innovative companies like Brightline” and what the government could do to help them thrive.

Cumber, the Brightline adviser, issued the warning about “safety incidents” increasing if federal grants get cut. And he argued it should be easier for a private company like Brightline to access federal loans and grants.

The company is seeking a $6 billion federal loan as construction costs rise for Brightline West, a new rail line that would run along the highway median between Las Vegas and Southern California. The project previously received a $3 billion federal grant.

Today, Brightline describes itself differently than when it first pitched the project to Floridians.

It is, the company recently told the Herald/WLRN, “a model public-private partnership.”

Anyone who is experiencing suicidal thoughts should contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) or Crisis Text Line (text “HELLO” to 741741) for immediate support. Regular check-ins with primary care physicians and clergy members, who often have insights into community resources, can also be beneficial.

How the Miami Herald and WLRN calculated the amount of public funding for Brightline-related projects

To determine how much government money has been allocated to projects related to Brightline, journalists at the Miami Herald and WLRN combed through federal, state and local records, plus public statements and media reports.

At the federal level, reporters reviewed publicly available spending records and obtained grant documents through public records requests. At the state level, reporters utilized Florida’s database of contracts, grant awards and purchase orders, as well as the Florida Department of Transportation’s five-year work program.

Items were counted in the overall tally if reporters found them to be directly related to the Brightline project. That included, among other things, safety measures along the route, enforcement efforts around the tracks, the construction of new stations, planning efforts related to future expansion and money for train cars.

The Herald/WLRN sought to identify funding that government agencies have set aside for those purposes, some of which has not yet been paid out. Not all of the money was requested by Brightline or directed to Brightline itself; some of it was granted to state and local agencies.

Brightline disputed the Herald/WLRN’s inclusion of a $130 million grant to the city of Stuart to replace a railroad bridge, saying the funds would benefit boat traffic and other rail partners, “not exclusively Brightline.”

Reporters included it in the tally because the city pursued the grant amid concerns about Brightline’s frequent trips over the bridge and its effects on boat traffic.

The company also challenged the inclusion of $70 million in city and county funds to build a platform for public Tri-Rail trains at Brightline’s downtown Miami station, saying it was intended to “benefit the greater good of establishing a multimodal train station downtown.”

The funds were counted in the tally because Brightline officials publicly acknowledged that the two rail services were “complementary” and because Brightline is seeking payments from Miami-Dade County for a commuter rail expansion that Tri-Rail could operate from the station.

By Allison Beck and Joshua Ceballos

Marie Mevil didn’t think twice about driving over the train tracks.

Her Pompano Beach home was less than 10 minutes away. She had dropped her daughter off at the airport and then stopped to send money to a friend in her native Haiti. Her 1-year-old grandson, Carson, was nestled in his car seat.

She was about to cross over the railroad tracks at Northeast Third Street and North Dixie Highway when the car in front of her stopped for a red light. A railroad crossing arm came down with a thud on top of her Nissan Rogue before she even realized a train was speeding toward her.

She was trapped.

The 71-year-old nurse’s aide drove forward and tried to make a U-turn off the tracks to escape when a Brightline train blasted through the back half of her car.

Since Brightline launched in 2018, its trains have hit 174 vehicles, killing 25 people and injuring 63 more, an investigation by the Miami Herald and South Florida NPR member station WLRN found.

Another 104 people survived without injuries, some by fleeing their cars before impact.

It happens with alarming regularity. During rush hour Wednesday evening, a Brightline train in North Miami struck a car at Northeast 141st Street. One victim was airlifted to a nearby trauma center.

In July, the reporting team found that Brightline is the nation’s deadliest major passenger railroad. At the time, its death toll was 182, a number that includes both drivers and pedestrians. Its fatality count has since reached 194.

When Mevil regained consciousness, her driver’s door was stuck, its frame warped in the collision. Something was wrong with her leg. Her chest burned where the seatbelt had bitten into her skin. It took all of her strength to kick open the door, and witnesses stared as she climbed out of the vehicle.

The car was severed at the back wheel. A tangle of metal, plastic and wire converged on the place where the baby’s car seat was supposed to be.

“Please help me!” she called out in a mix of English and Haitian Creole. “My grandson is in the back!”

Two men pulled Carson free of the wreckage. The baby seemed unharmed, and despite her broken collarbone, Mevil held him close as the crowd waited for police and EMS to arrive.

It was Nov. 8, 2021, and the luxury higher-speed train that hit Mevil was on its first journey after a 19-month pandemic hiatus. Brightline’s then-president Patrick Goddard had boarded it earlier that morning in Miami, bound for a press conference and celebration in West Palm Beach.

To witnesses, the baby’s survival was miraculous. But Brightline officials, who have consistently blamed victims for trespassing on the railroad tracks, focused on the grandmother.

“Today, we had a tragic reminder of what can happen in spite of grade crossings operating as they should and our team operating as it should,” Goddard said at a press conference. “This was an accident that was completely avoidable.”

“Don’t try to beat the train. That is the message.”

It had happened before.

The Northeast Third Street crossing in Pompano Beach had seen two crashes before Mevil’s — one in which a driver went around the gates and was killed, and another when a vehicle stopped on the tracks, injuring its three occupants.

“They made it seem like it was her fault,” said Mevil’s daughter, Caroline Trimmings, whose son was in the SUV. “They made it seem like she should have been more cautious.”

“My mom definitely wouldn’t, you know, run through a train or do something foolish.”

When Mevil talks about the collision’s aftermath, she runs shaking fingers over a long scar that peeks out from the collar of her dress — a mark from the seatbelt that likely saved her life.

Police handed her a citation for trespassing on the train tracks while she was still in her hospital bed. Her daughter translated. Long proud of her pristine driving record, Mevil decided to fight it.

In March 2022, an attorney from The Ticket Clinic appeared in Broward County traffic court on Mevil’s behalf. A judge dismissed the charges, which left no points on her license.

Mevil felt vindicated.

“Me no block nobody, no kill nobody. The case closed.”

Trapped on the tracks

Rosa Chacon wishes she’d listened to her husband.

It was the summer of 2019. Chacon’s husband was researching insurance options, but Chacon told him she was healthy and didn’t need the coverage.

Then, on her drive to work one morning, Chacon made a wrong turn. It led her to a North Miami railroad crossing she hadn’t gone through before.

The tracks run in front of a Lexus dealership and a large apartment building, where residents walk across the tracks to get to nearby grocery stores.

In 2014, Federal Railroad Administration officials recommended North Miami close the crossing, which intersects Northeast 141st Street near Biscayne Boulevard — the same site as Wednesday’s accident and one of the area’s busiest thoroughfares.

City officials declined. Other safety measures, like flexible barriers, road markings and suicide prevention signs, weren’t added either.

In 2018, a 26-year-old woman was struck from behind and killed by a Brightline train at the intersection.

Chacon didn’t know any of that as she pulled forward.

Like Mevil, she was driving through a railroad crossing when the car in front of her stopped.

Like Mevil, she heard a noise as the gate hit the top of her SUV.

“Everything was so fast,” Chacon told reporters in Spanish. “When I realized what was happening, the train was already there.”

She remembers seeing the headlights, then nothing. She was in shock when rescue crews arrived, and she insisted that she wasn’t going to the hospital, that she was going to work.

Within minutes, the pain hit.

“Everything, everything, everything hurt,” Chacon said. “I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get up.”

Chacon spent a few days in Aventura Hospital, where she recovered — at least, that’s what she told her doctors.

Her hospital bill added up to about $60,000, she said, and the North Miami Police Department added another $80 in the form of a traffic ticket for stopping on the tracks.

“I couldn’t bear the pain, but I told the doctor that I wanted to go and that I felt fine,” Chacon said. “It wasn’t that I actually felt fine, but I was thinking about what I’d have to pay the hospital.”

She returned to her work as a tailor the following week.

The bill — which Chacon said she and her husband are still paying in installments — isn’t the only thing that has followed her since the accident.

“Wounds on your body disappear slowly over time,” Chacon said. “But wounds on the inside? Those you keep.”

“When I’m waiting in traffic behind a bus, and the bus lights up at each stop, I think it’s the train lights,” she said. “I have to drive over the tracks every day because there’s no other way to get to work. There are tracks everywhere.”

‘The safest crossing is one that doesn’t exist’

As of August, the North Miami intersection where Chacon was hit had the second-highest number of Brightline collisions on the corridor — out of over 300 street-level crossings between Miami and Orlando, the Herald/WLRN team’s analysis found.

The combination of street-level crossings, quiet zones, vehicle traffic and the train’s high speed help account for Brightline’s astonishing fatality rate — one person killed every 13 days of service, on average.

Ian Savage, a Northwestern University economist and rail safety expert, said some flaws were baked into Brightline’s system more than a century ago.

Oil magnate Henry Flagler recognized Florida’s potential as a travel destination in the 1880s and built the Florida East Coast Railway to bring wealthy vacationers to his hotels and resorts across the state.

U.S. 1 came several decades later and was built parallel to the railway. As cars replaced train travel, the highway widened, inching closer to the tracks.

Then came Brightline, which saw an opportunity to serve commuters and tourists — while saving billions of dollars in costs by using the FEC tracks that were already there. Instead of constructing an elevated platform separating the train from traffic, a concept known as “grade separation,” Brightline trains would run at street level through more than 300 crossings, often in dense urban areas.

The train launched even though Federal Railroad Administration data showed how dangerous the crossings could be.

“Good people can get put in bad situations by bad road design,” Savage said. “We put railings in so people don’t fall off of balconies and things like that.”

Brightline executives have repeatedly stated that the company has abided by all safety regulations, that it has invested money into safety improvements and public awareness campaigns, and that Brightline has never been found at fault for an accident involving its trains.

“The train is safe, the railroad is safe, and Brightline operations have proven to be safe,” Michael Lefevre, Brightline’s vice president of operations, wrote in a statement to the Herald in July. “Where safety has been an issue is the way in which the community interacts with the railroad tracks.”

But local research indicates that engineered solutions are more effective than public awareness campaigns. In 2024, planners in Broward County examined whether the FEC tracks could take on a commuter rail service, examining best practices and the corridor’s history.

“The safest highway-rail grade crossing is the one that does not exist,” the authors wrote in a 477-page analysis. “Therefore, the most effective method of reducing accidents at crossings is to either close them or grade separate them. However, this approach involves the highest construction cost, and is the most disruptive to the community.”

As an alternative, the analysis included 19 different strategies for making crossings safer.

It shows that public awareness and enforcement programs are two to three times less effective than engineering solutions like lane delineators or vehicle sensors that could open gates if a car is trapped on the tracks.

“It’s the difference between telling your kid not to stick a fork in the electrical outlet — and childproofing it,” said Paul Calvaresi, who is part of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization team that wrote the report.

The worst-case scenario

There were only two safety arms at the W.H. Jackson Street crossing in Melbourne, Florida, which made it easier for risk-taking drivers familiar with slow-moving freight trains to dodge the flashing lights and cross to the other side.

For decades, Florida East Coast Railway trains had passed through the densely populated area of Central Florida’s Space Coast largely without incident. According to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board, there were just three crashes there between 1981 and 2006.

After Brightline began running on the same corridor, three people have died at the crossing and three more were seriously injured.

On Jan. 10, 2024, Terrica Culbreth was walking with her 9-year-old son along U.S. 1 when two friends offered them a ride home.

Keisha Gonzalez got out of the car to give Culbreth a hug. The two had met through Gonzalez’s time busking with her partner, Charles “Chuckie” Phillips. He stayed in the driver’s seat as Culbreth’s son climbed in behind him, followed by Culbreth herself.

Less than five minutes later, the car approached the W.H. Jackson Street railroad crossing.

“When I seen the train, I told him not to go. I yelled not to go,” Culbreth later told investigators. “I don’t know why he went.”

Phillips stepped on the gas.

According to a report from the Melbourne Police Department, a Brightline train was heading northbound to Orlando as Phillips’ bright orange Honda Element approached the crossing. The alarms blared, and the two gate arms went down like they were supposed to.

Culbreth described Phillips looking at her, then at Gonzalez, then continuing forward, switching lanes to pass a stopped car and the lowered gate.

“I said to myself, ‘Please don’t let there be any blood. Don’t let nobody be hurt,’” Gonzalez recalled.

She doesn’t remember much of what happened afterward.

Surveillance video from a nearby business shows the impact — the SUV striking the first car of the Brightline, then the train dragging the Honda along the tracks, flipping the vehicle into an embankment.

Phillips was declared dead at the scene. His toxicology report shows that he had both THC and a synthetic drug known as “bath salts” in his blood. The stimulant is known to cause bizarre behavior and aggression.

His three passengers were hospitalized for days. None, including Culbreth’s son, were wearing seatbelts, according to the police report.

Gonzalez learned about her partner’s death in the hospital.

“When they came in and told me he was dead, I cried,” Gonzalez said. “I think you could probably hear me through the whole hospital. I just couldn’t believe that he was gone.”

“He was my heartbeat.”

Two days later, another couple drove around the safety gates and onto the tracks. Both were killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board opened an inquiry and found that all of the lights and safety gates were operational at the time of the collision with Phillips’ Honda and that he had a history of driving with a suspended license.

Documents from the investigation also show that the number of trains on the Melbourne tracks tripled after 2023 — a key factor in what experts call exposure, which is calculated by multiplying the average daily vehicle traffic at a crossing by the number of trains that pass by.

Following the crashes, Brightline and the city installed bright yellow poles and four-way gates at the crossing. Brightline also added red-light cameras.

Since then, no injuries or fatalities have been reported at the W.H. Jackson intersection.

Shradha Dinesh, Susan Merriam and Brittany Wallman contributed reporting to this story.

Anyone who is experiencing suicidal thoughts should contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) or Crisis Text Line (text “HELLO” to 741741) for immediate support. Regular check-ins with primary care physicians and clergy members, who often have insights into community resources, can also be beneficial.

How the Miami Herald and WLRN found Brightline’s death toll

A team of reporters from the Miami Herald and WLRN spent over a year documenting every death involving Brightline trains since the rail line’s launch seven years ago. Drawing on autopsy reports and local law enforcement records, reporters discovered that 194 people — so far — have been killed by the fast-speed train.

The team of reporters analyzed federal railroad data, reviewed federal safety studies, consulted experts and reviewed hundreds of pages of medical examiner and police incident reports to better understand the factors that contributed to each death and to compare Brightline’s safety record against other railroads nationwide.

Read the full methodology here.

Note

Crash reconstruction illustrations used in this story were drawn based on police reports, available surveillance footage and interviews with witnesses. The illustrations are not drawn to scale.

By Brittany Wallman and Allison Beck

Today, the Miami Herald and WLRN publish a memorial list of the 196 people struck and killed by Brightline trains in Florida since 2017 — to honor their lives, raise awareness about the deadly Brightline corridor and spark conversations about how public safety can be improved.

Their lives ended suddenly, and often without recognition. Some were mocked or derided in social media posts and online commentary.

Their families are hurting. So are the train crews.

Over the course of a year, the Herald and WLRN, South Florida’s NPR member station, investigated the reasons why the Brightline passenger rail system is America’s deadliest. We reviewed the circumstances of each death, in police files and autopsy reports, to understand why so many people are dying — one every 13 days, on average.

That year of reporting produced the first comprehensive accounting of Brightline deaths — and the names of those who died.

All but 26 were on foot or bicycle. More than half were walking across the tracks where there are no gates or bells, and usually, no fences.

The Brightline corridor still lacks protections that could prevent deaths. Some safety improvements are coming, funded largely by taxpayers with help from Brightline.

The memorial roster begins with 18-year-old Madison “Maddie” Brunelle, who was struck by a Brightline train on a test run in 2017. The list concludes with the Dec. 21 death of 63-year-old John Joseph Aulenti in Dania Beach.

The death toll continues to climb.

Documenting the dead

Madison Brunelle, 18

July 24, 2017

Jennifer Reed, 35

Nov. 1, 2017

Melissa Lavell, 32

Jan. 12, 2018

Jeffrey King, 51

Jan. 17, 2018

John Nitz, 56

March 11, 2018

Douglas Scott Updike Jr., 34

April 8, 2018

Christopher Bailey, 46

June 1, 2018

Luke Sherrill, 29

June 20, 2018

Calvin Owens Easterly, 34

Aug. 18, 2018

Paul Benito J. Sandoval, 36

Sept. 14, 2018

Chedeline Corrielant Fleurimond, 26

Nov. 3, 2018

Dennis Lee Conrad, 67

Nov. 23, 2018

Frederik Anthony Vaniersel, 60

Dec. 6, 2018

David Ulmer, 39

Dec. 13, 2018

Andres Israel Rodriguez Oliva, 36

Jan. 1, 2019

Nelson Esquivel, 30

Jan. 14, 2019

Carter Philip McDonald, 59

Jan. 23, 2019

Dereck Edwards, 55

Jan. 31, 2019

Lauren Chelsea Senechal, 23

Feb. 13, 2019

Marcos Vidal, 43

March 7, 2019

Therese Pierre Jules, 48

March 20, 2019

Donald William Krinkie, 74

April 12, 2019

Felicia Denise McKenzie, 38

May 12, 2019

Princess D. Davis, 31

May 18, 2019

Cody Ronald Camp, 17

June 3, 2019

Kevin Puryear, 59

June 10, 2019

Orlando Rivera Agosto, 57

June 16, 2019

Brandon Brown, 24

July 25, 2019

David Lopez, 31

July 29, 2019

Patricia Wassuta, 64

Aug. 10, 2019

Robert Ballard, 56

Aug. 20, 2019

Wisly Isma, 46

Aug. 25, 2019

Gregory Eugene Williams, 60

Aug. 29, 2019

Andria Dawn Montoya, 37

Sept. 5, 2019

Paul Smith, 47

Sept. 6, 2019

Clivet Alberto Romero, 46

Sept. 12, 2019

Joseph Lawrence Kartheiser, 57

Sept. 24, 2019

Mollie Ann Herrera, 37

Oct. 13, 2019

Joseph Philippe, 47

Nov. 2, 2019

Rodney Keyon Cox Jr., 19

Nov. 13, 2019

Veronica Martinez Vorano, 54

Nov. 15, 2019

Desmond L. Dwyer, 58

Dec. 4, 2019

Jose A. Roibal, 55

Dec. 20, 2019

Derek Chandras, 30

Jan. 1, 2020

James Ratliff, 50

Jan. 21, 2020

Mary Delancy, 58

Jan. 27, 2020

Willie Mitchell, 38

Feb. 18, 2020

Alexis Marion, 17

Feb. 24, 2020

Henrisha Victoria France Donjoie, 21

March 17, 2020

Ricardo Printemps, 30

July 21, 2021

Kimberly Rae Haase, 40

Nov. 23, 2021

Darran J. Wilson, 36

Dec. 2, 2021

Carmen Pellegrino, 64

Dec. 7, 2021

Luke Naumiuk, 25

Dec. 11, 2021

Carolyn Carswell Robinson, 73

Dec. 13, 2021

Juan Levit Silva Pedraza, 19

Dec. 17, 2021

Marc Charleus, 68

Dec. 30, 2021

Veronique Charleus, 58

Dec. 30, 2021

Wilfredo Monge, 33

Jan. 4, 2022

Jerry Santomaso, 66

Jan. 27, 2022

Hidegalde Perez, 48

Feb. 13, 2022

Demitre Ramos, 19

Feb. 15, 2022

David J. Moeller, 34

Feb. 19, 2022

Manuel Fama, 42

March 12, 2022

Jean Sonel, 42

March 26, 2022

Whitnie Laura Walker, 43

April 13, 2022

Jacob Bresnahan, 27

May 2, 2022

Maher Soua, 52

May 3, 2022

Deanna Joyce Burton-Lyons, 54

May 7, 2022

Annmargret Garbato, 39

May 31, 2022

Liesel Hulden, 84

June 7, 2022

Jordan Elijah Abiera Sinsuat, 39

June 22, 2022

Robert Michael Carman, 58

July 7, 2022

Gabriel Quiros, 47

Aug. 2, 2022

Rodney King Bondanella, 67

Aug. 7, 2022

Lee Meyers, 52

Aug. 9, 2022

Raymond Arnold, 61

Aug. 24, 2022

Stephen John Jankowiak, 47

Sept. 2, 2022

Harold Alexander Krumin, 53

Sept. 19, 2022

Addison Dajonjamal Jones, 35

Oct. 1, 2022

Jon Alexander, 64

Oct. 3, 2022

Hanna Dudnik, 43

Oct. 7, 2022

Hector Bonilla Ramos, 37

Oct. 19, 2022

James Mark Ostrowski, 74

Oct. 25, 2022

Michael Sullivan, 43

Oct. 27, 2022

James Mitchell, 64

Nov. 21, 2022

Layfun Moore Jr., 36

Dec. 9, 2022

Kristo David Leon, 36

Dec. 11, 2022

Gery Edmond, 52

Dec. 27, 2022

Ethan Azuz, 36

Dec. 27, 2022

Mary Ann Dubose, 62

Jan. 1, 2023

Ryan Edward Reusch, 44

Jan. 9, 2023

Krystal Nicole Boulton, 38

Jan. 21, 2023

Chad Allan Ward, 41

Feb. 7, 2023

Arthur Seth Jacobson, 82

Feb. 8, 2023

Bette Jacobson, 77

Feb. 8, 2023

Elias D Martinez, 30

March 14, 2023

Derek Allyn Cheesman, 47

April 27, 2023

Ryan Mafia Filsaime, 29

May 12, 2023

Jonatan Alexand Cabrera-Grande, 37

May 14, 2023

Tracy Beth Lauren, 47

May 21, 2023

Dyanna Marie Fernandez, 29

June 2, 2023

Jeffrey Balsewich, 50

June 5, 2023

Hansel Fardi Vera Pinto, 31

July 23, 2023

James Bennet Hence III, 29

Sept. 3, 2023

Rachael Beth Holmes, 50

Sept. 22, 2023

Braden Rider Meyer, 25

Sept. 28, 2023

Demetrius Wilder, 44

Oct. 6, 2023

Lisa Marie Molnar, 60

Oct. 19, 2023

Joseph Francois, 66

Oct. 30, 2023

Danny S. Black, 55

Nov. 11, 2023

James Hawthorne Jr., 60

Nov. 22, 2023

Gary Millar, 69

Dec. 19, 2023

Katherine Alexa Stimus, 36

Dec. 24, 2023

Charles Julian Phillips, 62

Jan. 10, 2024

Lisa Ann Batchelder, 52

Jan. 12, 2024

Michael Anthony Degasperi, 54

Jan. 12, 2024

Wesley Ducheneaux, 29

Jan. 29, 2024

Melissa Ordonez, 42

Jan. 30, 2024

Kevin Lopez-Gabriel, 35

Feb. 3, 2024

Mark Louis Segretto, 33

Feb. 8, 2024

Judesse Simeon, 53

Feb. 9, 2024

Devante Lee Cylla, 28

Feb. 16, 2024

Emily Alexandra Kayser, 35

Feb. 16, 2024

Elisa Elvira Paris Casanova, 53

March 5, 2024

Juan Castillo, 56

March 8, 2024

Maikel Mendoza Ramirez, 42

March 13, 2024

Mark Harrison, 60

April 1, 2024

Jeffrey Vasche, 69

April 14, 2024

Randy Lawrence Johanson, 62

April 18, 2024

Drew Harrison Epstein, 30

May 5, 2024

Cheryl Townsend, 56

May 5, 2024

Richard Schmidt, 36

May 11, 2024

Judith Taina Rosa, 22

May 14, 2024

Zinatosadat Moinzadeh, 74

May 18, 2024

Jordyn Anthony Kruzel, 25

May 26, 2024

Ralph Peter Ierardi Jr., 28

May 31, 2024

Edilmiro Cordero, 66

June 1, 2024

Christopher Drew Cannon, 57

June 2, 2024

Leroy Allen Perry, 67

June 12, 2024

Camuler Taniclas, 71

June 18, 2024

Connor Jack Mahoney, 19

July 5, 2024

Scott Sullivan Spurgeon, 45

July 8, 2024

Jordan Croom, 26

July 13, 2024

James Alan Bonin, 65

July 18, 2024

Abby Mae Reid, 27

July 31, 2024

Raul Ruiz, 65

Aug. 7, 2024

Duane Stuart Matheson, 68

Aug. 8, 2024

Marshall Malcolm, 25

Aug. 11, 2024

Edenilson Misael Gabriel Salvador, 26

Aug. 17, 2024

Eric P. Geller, 77

Aug. 26, 2024

Brett Philip Tucker, 56

Sept. 9, 2024

Wilson Whitney Locke, 68

Sept. 27, 2024

Ashton Cole Godwin, 20

Oct. 3, 2024

Luxio Remiro Chacon, 56

Oct. 4, 2024

Jan Gershkoff, 74

Oct. 25, 2024

Kevin Sookoo, 26

Nov. 2, 2024

Ramon Ernesto Hernandez, 36

Nov. 19, 2024

Robyn Peress, 59

Nov. 26, 2024

Bryan De Paz Vazquez, 25

Dec. 10, 2024

Amelise Renoir Noel, 60

Dec. 26, 2024

Albert Williams, 49

Dec. 27, 2024

Susan Chong, 69

Dec. 30, 2024

Duke Allen Holeman, 67

Jan. 4, 2025

Jason Kelly Lloyd, 46

Jan. 13, 2025

Nathan Joseph Adderly, 60

Jan. 15, 2025

Joann DePina, 49

Jan. 16, 2025

Rene Andres Mulero Russe, 27

Jan. 31, 2025

Jorge Miguel Rivera Cedillo, 23

Feb. 8, 2025

Lorenzo F. Ordonez Sanchez, 40

Feb. 8, 2025

Eric Miguel Wolf, 43

March 13, 2025

Christy Mateluna, 41

March 18, 2025

Alex Gomez Lenis, 30

March 22, 2025

Timothy Matthew Elliott, 42

March 25, 2025

Kevin Douglas Johnson, 33

March 27, 2025

Atilon Andy Thomas, 23

May 14, 2025

Eric Christopher Daniels, 55

May 29, 2025

Valerie Lynn Murguia, 65

June 3, 2025

Dennis James Pollard, 69

June 4, 2025

Dawinyn Salomon Lopez Jarquin, 36

June 8, 2025

Charles Lasala, 70

July 3, 2025

Joshua Lawrence Tanner, 26

July 6, 2025

Mark Joseph Jurewicz, 62

July 14, 2025

Alejandro Daniel Itkin, 58

July 24, 2025

Kuen J. McGlauflin, 21

Aug. 10, 2025

Holly Lorraine Eckert, 57

Sept. 2, 2025

Marco Burgos, 57

Sept. 6, 2025

Eleanora Mitchell, 83

Sept. 12, 2025

Brian David Baker, 63

Oct. 22, 2025

Oleksandr Nimashchuk, 23

Oct. 26, 2025

Jacob Patrick Weaver, 26

Nov. 2, 2025

Steve Daniel Collier, 62

Nov. 3, 2025

David Cajigas, 54

Nov. 6, 2025

Andre Darnell Burgess, 40

Nov. 10, 2025

Alexis Natanael Villatoro Gaspar, 30

Dec. 15, 2025

John Joseph Aulenti, 63

Dec. 21, 2025

We’ve used name spellings and ages derived straight from official documents. Dates reflect when the accident occurred, not necessarily the date the person died. If you see a mistake, please let us know so we can correct it. Email us at [email protected].