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A man from Danbury was among the six people who were killed in a deadly train crash in Valhalla, N.Y., in February. The accident occurred when a Metro-North train struck an SUV that had been stopped on the tracks. In the aftermath of the crash, U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Charles Schumer called for Metro-North to take more measures to increase safety.
Norwalk saw two fatal highway crashes in two days in October. An 85-year-old Darien woman was killed in a crash on Route 7 on Oct. 7 when a car she was traveling in was struck from behind, causing it to go over a guardrail and down an embankment. The next day, a bus driver was killed and 18 others were injured when the bus rear-ended a tractor-trailer on I-95. The two accidents led to a step up in enforcement on the highways by state police.
Ridgefield was rocked when three teenagers were killed in two separate accidents just days apart. Ryan Meegan, a Ridgefield High School graduate, was killed on Sept. 18 in a car crash near the University of Connecticut in Storrs, where he attended college. Two Ridgefield natives attending Colgate University, Cathryn (Carey) Depuy and Ryan Adams, a graduate of St. Luke's in New Canaan, were killed in a plane crash in Morrisville, N.Y., on Sept. 20 near their college campus.
Rebecca Draper Townsend, 17, of Brookfield was struck and killed by a car while saving the life of a friend after a fireworks show in Danbury in July. Her friend, a 17-year-old from New Fairfield, said that she had pushed him out of the way of the car as it was heading toward them. Her story made national headlines when it was discovered that her sacrifice had fulfilled the last item on a bucket list she had created — to save a life.
Several people were struck and killed by trains throughout Fairfield County this year. A 32-year-old man was hit by a Metro-North train near the Fairfield Metro Station in May. In August a Stamford woman was killed after she jumped on the tracks to retrieve her wallet. A 50-year-old Wilton priest was killed by a train in Westport in September. A Milford woman was struck by an Amtrak train in Southport in late October, and a Milford man who had been reported missing was killed by an Amtrak train in Stratford in November.
A Connecticut State Trooper’s dashboard camera captured footage of a Fairfield crash that seriously injured one person. The trooper had been on the scene of a two-car crash on I-95 when another car came barreling in and slammed into the two cars.
Finally, one accident was avoided when quick action by a Norwalk police officer prevented what could have been a deadly crash in March. Officer Neil Robertson spotted an SUV stopped in traffic with its rear wheels still on the train tracks as a train quickly approached. He jumped out of his car and began directing traffic in order to make room just in the nick of time.
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