Boy hit by train was headed home from track practice

AWFUL TRAGEDY: A 12-year-old boy was riding his Razor home from cross-country track practice late Monday afternoon when he was struck and killed by a southbound train in Garfield, witnesses told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Jerry DeMarco

10/04/2011 1:19 a.m.

CLIFFVIEW PILOT photo

The seventh-grader was hit by a Hoboken-bound commuter train at the Outwater Lane crossing, several yards from NJ Transit’s new Plauderville train station, right on the Saddle Brook border.

“He crossed as one train passed,” a woman who lives across the street from the site told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “But then another train on the other [southbound] side hit him.”

A friend of the Lanza Avenue family said they are obviously unable to make any sense of the awful tragedy.

“Everyone is in shock right now,” she told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

For an account of the incident, click: Boy killed by train in Garfield

Because his mother works part-time for the Garfield School District and he attended Thomas Jefferson Middle School, news of the blue-eyed boy’s death quickly spread through the community and beyond.

CLIFFVIEW PILOT won’t publish his name, however. The family is enduring more than enough right now.

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