Memorials set up at the railway crossing where the young girl was fatally struck - Date unknown Amanda Grant.

3 December 2012

Girl 11 Killed Trying to Outrun Train

London Ontario - One minute the London girls were giggling, as the best friends often did.
 
The next minute, one tried to outrun a freight train as it bore down on nearby tracks.
 
It was a race Kendra Cameron, 11, couldn't win, leaving behind a shattered family, friends, and neighbours shaking with sorrow.
 
Kendra and her best friend, 13, both students at F.D. Roosevelt public school, were walking home from the Gibraltar Trade Centre, where Kendra's parents operate a food booth. Witnesses say the two girls tried to run across the tracks Saturday about 4:35 p.m.
 
Witnesses believe Kendra may have thought her friend was running behind her when she darted across the tracks and was struck by a westbound Canadian Pacific train.
 
Ken Locking, who lives nearby, was one of the first people to arrive on the horrific scene.
 
"I ran down there and the one girl was just standing there," he said. "I said, What happened to your friend? She was just screaming and yelling, running back down the street going, I want my mom and dad, I want my mom and dad. I want to get out of here, I'm scared."
 
"I looked under the train, which had stopped, and I could see down the ways a girl in the ditch... It was an awful sight to see."
 
Minutes later, Kendra's father was told his daughter was hit by a train.
 
The distraught dad rushed out of the market to the scene, where Locking met him.
 
"I told him not to look," Locking said. "Then I heard a lady screaming and her mother came running up... She sort of pushed me and jumped on her daughter and was yelling, Kendra, what did you do, what did you do?"
 
Emergency workers tried frantically to save Kendra, performing CPR before rushing her to University Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
 
A steady stream of mourners gathered Sunday at a makeshift memorial near the tracks to pay their respects.
 
Flowers, a stuffed duck, and an angel statue decorated the fence.
 
Family members remembered Kendra as a tall brunette who, like most girls her age, loved Justin Bieber.
 
"She was a sweetheart. She was so full of life," said Linda Rupert, Kendra's grandmother.
 
The crossbucks, gates, and signal lights were all working at the railway crossing at the time of the accident, a CP spokesperson said.
 
Dale Carruthers.