By Amanda Thomason September 15, 2021 at 12:09pm
A tragedy occurred in San Francisco Monday afternoon when a woman died after being dragged by a Bay Area Rapid Transit train.
According to footage and eyewitness accounts, 41-year-old Amy Adams boarded the train with her dog, whose lead was apparently tethered to her waist.
It was about 3:15 p.m. when Adams boarded the Dublin/Pleasanton-bound train from the Powell Street station.
As the train car doors began to close, Adams hopped off and appeared to wave at someone, but the dog was still on the train. The leash did not trigger the door sensors, and the train departed, dragging Adams behind it.
The dog, which appeared to be a German shepherd, stayed inside the train and was not harmed.
While pets are required to be in carriers when traveling on BART, service dogs are allowed to board while leashed. Authorities are uncertain whether the dog was a service animal, though it did appear to be wearing a vest.
A woman named Angela held onto the dog until it reached the next stop and she could hand it off to a station agent. The dog was returned to Adams’ roommate.
“She was very shaken up,” Heather Griffin, who was at the Powell station, said. “Everyone was very sad.
“It was a rough evening. Aside from all the commute issues.”
One mother/daughter duo claimed to see Adams get dragged along by her backpack, according to KTVU-TV, but officials who later reviewed the footage said that was not the case.
Another witness, Mike Sim, saw Adams’ last moments and spoke with a distraught man who appeared to be the woman’s boyfriend.
“It was kind of like dut, dut, dut, dut, du,” Sim told KABC-TV. “Everybody was in shock … It was pretty traumatic.”
The accident caused a multitude of delays and the Powell Street station was closed for nearly two hours.
“This is a tragic loss of life, and we are following all safety protocols,” BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing. The National Transportation Safety Board representatives plan to speak with witnesses and review footage of the incident to see if any improvements to the train system need to be made.
Amanda holds an MA in Rhetoric and TESOL from Cal Poly Pomona. After teaching composition and logic for several years, she’s strayed into writing full-time and especially enjoys animal-related topics.
As of January 2019, Amanda has written over 1,000 stories for The Western Journal but doesn’t really know how. Graduating from California State Polytechnic University with a MA in Rhetoric/Composition and TESOL, she wrote her thesis about metacognitive development and the skill transfer between reading and writing in freshman students.
She has a slew of interests that keep her busy, including trying out new recipes, enjoying nature, discussing ridiculous topics, reading, drawing, people watching, developing curriculum, and writing bios. Sometimes she has red hair, sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes she’s had teal hair.
With a book on productive communication strategies in the works, Amanda is also writing and illustrating some children’s books with her husband, Edward.
Location
Austin, Texas
Languages Spoken
English und ein bißchen Deutsch
Topics of Expertise
Faith, Animals, Cooking