Grieving parents wonder why daughter was on railroad tracks
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The 19-year-old who was struck and killed by a passenger train as she walked on railroad tracks near Golden Gardens Park in Ballard was a graduate of Shorewood High School in Shoreline who had attended Shoreline Community College.
Mary K. Nelson was looking for the man who had picked up her cellular phone when she died Thursday evening.
Yesterday, Nelson's parents wonder what their daughter and her friends were doing near the tracks.
"She was a beautiful girl inside and out," said her mother, Rosemary Nelson. "She was a headstrong girl. You don't tell a 19-year-old girl much.
"It's probably the worst thing you could ever experience. Maybe reporting on it will keep it from happening to someone else."
Friends who had been at the park with Nelson said she realized she'd misplaced her cellular phone. She borrowed another phone to call her cell-phone number and a man answered, saying he'd found the phone in the sand on the beach and would meet her on the railroad tracks to return it.
When Nelson got to the tracks, a train stopped on the east tracks began to move noisily. Witnesses told police they saw a different train approaching Nelson and waved their arms and shouted to get her attention.
Because of the noise and the distance, Nelson apparently didn't hear them and likely didn't understand why they were waving, police said.
The second train hit Nelson, killing her instantly.
Nelson's parents said she had worked at an auto-parts store, where she got interested in things mechanical and later bought herself a bright yellow, customized "monster" truck.
"I'm not exaggerating," her mother said. "I couldn't get in it."
"We could not talk her out of it," her father, Gary Nelson, said. "She'd work on it. She'd crawl under it and come back inside just covered with grease."
But Mary Nelson sold the truck and was talking about getting a van and driving to California to visit friends and relatives.
"Don't you know, Mom, you have to experience life," she would tell her mother. Said her mother, "I was always worried about her for something. She was kind of between everything."
The railroad tracks where Nelson was struck, owned by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, are marked as private property.
A 14-year-old girl was killed last month in the same area when she was hit by a train.
Trains frequently have struck pedestrians in the vicinity, although fences mark off some sections of the tracks and signs warn against trespassing.
Reaching the tracks from the beach requires climbing a rock retaining wall, about 15 feet high, and cutting through brambles, yet footpaths through the brush indicate pedestrians frequently do so.
Burlington Northern officials often hear suggestions to fence railroad tracks, but that's virtually impossible, said Gus Melonas, railroad spokesman in Seattle.
"We have 33,500 miles of tracks, and it's impossible to fence every inch of property," Melonas said.
Gary and Rosemary Nelson said they bear no resentment toward others for their daughter's death.
"It's just so obviously not the place to be," Gary Nelson said. "It's posted. You'd think that after the number of accidents along there, you'd think the kids wouldn't be there."
Peyton Whitely can be reached at 206-464-3198 or pwhitely@seattletimes.com.