Fatal Train Accident in Seymour Missouri Still Under Investigation

A fatal train crash in Webster County Missouri is still under investigation as residents in Seymour mourn the loss of two of its residents. 58 year-old Gary Lee and his 34 year-old son, Chad Lee, were fatally injured when their dump truck was broadsided by a frieght train. The collision took place at a railroad crossing on Oak Lawn Road. This location is off of Highway 60 in Seymour Missouri. A Burlington Northern locomotive struck the white dump truck with enough force to cause the truck to be mangled. Driver Gary Lee and his son Chad had little chance of surviving the impact.

Fatal railroad crossing accidents often trigger major reconstruction investigations by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. These efforts typically take six to eight weeks and family members are urged to be patient while officers collect, analyze, and render opinions on forensic evidence from the scene. Often officers will apply laws and regulations that govern the trucking and railroad industries in utlimately reaching conclusions of what contributed to the cause of the collision. Safety regulations are obviously in place to prevent fatal incidents such as this.

As a law firm that has been involved in railroad crossing litigation in the past, one of the first things we do is hire our own investigation team to conduct a thorough and complete accident reconstruction. This includes such tasks as arial photographs of the layout of the scene, and hundreds of photographs of the area itself, inclusive of foliage and other factors that can contribute to causing a crash like this. Downloads of the locomotives "black box" is also a top priority. Data pulled from the black box will tell us what the train engineer was doing just moments before impact. For example, did he sound his horn pursuant to legal requirements? What was the speed of the train? When were the brakes first applied?

Railroad crossing litigation is a complex practice. Wrongful death cases involving a train are very expensive. Our missouri injury lawyers can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars prosecuting a serious injury or death that results from a train colliding with a passenger vehicle. Filing a lawsuit agianst a giant railway corporation is an intimidating proposition for many law firms who are not familiar with this process or how to win in court.