18-year-old Garner woman hit, killed by Amtrak train in Apex

The incident occurred at about 10:15 p.m. on a remote section of tracks near the Apex High School football field. Police identified the woman on Thursday as Ava Sory. A 17-year-old boy who was with her wasn't hurt, authorities said.

Emma Sadler, who lives in a nearby apartment complex, said she thought it was unusual to hear a train horn late at night, considering there isn't a railroad crossing in the area.

"It blared a horn for about five, 10 seconds," Sadler said. "It was such a long horn. It was just going off, and you could tell it wasn’t going anywhere."

Police said the area isn't a typical spot where people walk along the train tracks. The two people involved were believed to be on foot at the time of the incident.

"This is highly unusual," Apex Deputy Police Chief Mitch McKinney said. "The particular location where the track is located and where this crash occurred is not a place that people can normally, easily get to."

But Joshua Yepez, who lives nearby, said he knows students and young adults frequently walk along the tracks there.

"There’s definitely people that go to the high school there that will be back there, people walking and taking pictures," Yepez said. "But it’s not like a known thing to go on those train tracks right there."

State officials have worked for years to discourage people from walking on railroad tracks, said Jason Orthner, director of the state Department of Transportation's Rail Division.

"Tracks are really for trains, and they're not places for people to just hang out," Orthner said. "We've been trying to get the message out that tracks are not playgrounds. Trains are very interesting, they're beautiful from a distance, but really we do not want people on a railroad tracks."

Technological upgrades mean that trains can travel more quickly and quietly than ever before, so people on the tracks might not have enough warning of an approaching train to get out of the way in time, he said.

"There's no joints in the tracks. There's no clickety-clack," he said/ "If you're not near a crossing, the horn is not blowing, either, so it can come up on you almost instantaneously, which is why we encourage people to really avoid being on or around railroad tracks."

Twenty-two people were killed by trains in North Carolina in 2019, and at least 40 others were injured, Orthner said.

Sory was enrolled in the computer technology degree program at Wake Technical Community College in the 2019-20 academic year, but school officials said she hadn't taken a class at Wake Tech since spring 2020.

The Silver Star train, which was headed from New York to Miami, was stopped for about five hours after the incident, finally leaving the area at about 3 a.m. None of the 122 passengers or eight crew members were hurt.

U.S. Highway 64 was closed between North Salem Street and Laura Duncan Road overnight while police investigated the incident.