Police chopper stops train from colliding with stalled car on tracks
RIVERSIDE, Calif.- A police helicopter crew is being credited with helping to stop a train from colliding with a car stuck on railroad tracks in Riverside.
CBS Station KCBS reports that Riverside Police Department's Air Support Unit (AIR-1) was working a call in the area at about 10:20 p.m. Saturday, when a call came in reporting that a vehicle had lost control and rolled over.
The car had come to a stop on railroad tracks in the area of Dewey Street and Streeter Avenue.
The helicopter crew noticed a BNSF freight train travelling West directly below them and realized the train was on the same set of tracks, about two miles away from the stuck car.
The helicopter crew -- officers Steven Quinn and Chris Tavaglione -- flew ahead of the train and descended to about 100 feet, directly in the conductor's field of view. Using their spotlight (referred to as a "Night Sun"), they signaled to the conductor to stop the train.
"We came to find out that it was actually closer to the train than we had originally believed, which gave us even less time," said pilot Steven Quinn.
They then used their spotlight to illuminate the car on the tracks.
The train eventually came to a stop about 40 feet east of the vehicle.
The train conductor said, had it not been for the flight crew signaling him, he would not have had enough time to stop the two-mile-long train and prevent a potentially fatal collision.
Meanwhile, the driver of the car had exited his vehicle by the time ground units arrived. He was later arrested and booked for drunk driving.
The officers are being called heroes for their quick thinking which helped avert a terrible accident, but neither believes they are heroes. "Honestly, we were just doing our job," Tavaglione told KCBS correspondent Greg Mills. They call it a team effort with the 911 dispatcher and the train's engineer.