Terror On The Trestle: Kids Can't Outrun Train

JOPLIN, Mo. - The scene is awful beyond belief - a four-engine freight bears down on three children stranded on a trestle high above a shallow, sun-dappled fishing hole.

Hand in hand they try to flee, scrambling over rough-hewn railroad ties and the 6-inch gaps between them as their stepfather, frantic on the creek bank below, screams for them to run faster.

They almost made it.

"They would have been better off if they had jumped," said police Lt. Ed Brown. "But they all joined hands and ran."

They had reached the end of the 102-foot, one-track trestle but were still 20 feet from level ground and safety when the locomotive, braking but unable to stop 112 coal-laden cars , ran them down.

Melissa Seay, 12, and her 9-year-old brother, William, known as "Bud," were killed instantly Sunday. The youngest, 5-year-old Austin, held on until Monday.

Six hundred people gathered for the siblings' funeral services at the Central Christian Center, housed in an ornate old downtown Joplin movie theater.

Austin's coffin was flanked by those of his sister and brother, mirroring their places as they raced across the trestle. Mementos were tucked in beside them: a teddy bear for Melissa, toy cars for the boys.

The tragic poignancy of their joint funeral echoed the very closeness that may have contributed to their deaths.

"They all stuck together. They had the youngest by the hand and Bud's leg slipped through the space between the ties. The other two went back to get him," said Larry Sherman, a family friend and pallbearer. "They almost made it."

Sherman said the children had just come home Sunday afternoon from a weekend with their father, Tom Seay, when their stepfather, Gregory McPherson, packed them off to Turkey Creek, a popular spot to catch catfish and perch.

As the sunshine gave way to slanting evening shadows, the children left McPherson fishing and climbed up the loose rocks on a steep incline to the rusty trestle, about 24 feet above the creek. Asign near the track warns against trespassing on railroad property.

"We don't know why they were up there, probably exploring and playing like kids do," said police Sgt. John Jensen.

Jensen said the children were about a quarter of the way across when a southbound Kansas City Southern Railway Co. train rounded a curve behind them - the first glimpse engineer Martin R. Wade would have of the children.

Jensen said the children's only other route to safety was to jump over the edge, a choice that might have seemed even more frightening.

"Their only thought was to run away from danger," he said.