A mother and her daughter ran hand-in-hand away from train tracks seconds before the locomotive rammed into their stuck SUV.
The close call was captured on video and also showed the father safely escaping the incoming train.
There were a total of five family members in the SUV and all managed to cheat death. Three of them were children under 12 years old and everyone evacuated unscathed, Cody Atchley, who posted the clip on Facebook, told the Daily Mail.
As a Union Pacific train was approaching in the distance in Forney, Texas, the driver of the SUV stopped in the tracks at a red light instead of before the tracks, according to Atchley.
‘The arms came down for train to pass (and) was on top of the SUV,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t get out because of vehicle… Close seconds before (the) train hit them they jumped out and grab the kids from back seats.’
As the mother and daughter and another adult were seen running, the train struck the maroon-colored SUV on its rear, turning it 180-degrees so its front was facing the back of the train.
It is the latest of numerous near-deadly train scenarios in the US.
In February, a semi-truck driver narrowly escaped before a freight train plowed through and tore the vehicle into pieces. A video taken by a witness showed a tractor-trailer in an intersection in Haverstraw, which is about 40 miles from New York City. Suddenly, a train barrels through and continues on its tracks while the truck is shattered into pieces of wood and other materials.
The family-of-five escaped escaped just weeks after train workers on an approaching locomotive rescued a three-year-old autistic boy who had wandered onto the tracks near the Tarrytown station in New York.
A Metro-North Railroad assistant conductor jumped off the train and ran 40 yards ahead and scooped up the boy and brought him on board. The toddler was shortly after reunited with his crying family members.
