Calls From The Dead

On September 12, 2008, 49-year-old Charles Peck boarded a Metrolink commuter train. Peck was traveling to Van Nuys, California, for a job interview.  The job, at the Van Nuys Airport, was very important to Peck as it would allow him and his fiancée Andrea Katz to finally marry.  Tragically, the couples dream of spending the future together would never happen as Charles Peck’s life and the lives of 24 others was about to end.

 

Unknown to those on the Metrolink there was a freight train on the same tracks, coming in the opposite direction.  A red warning light was flashing along the side of the rail but was not seen or not responded to by the Metrolink engineer.  The Metrolink train failed to veer onto another track and the two trains collided in what has become known as “The Chatsworth Crash.”  At the time of the crash Andrea Katz, along with members of Peck’s family, were driving to pick him up at the train station when they heard the news on the radio.

 

A massive rescue effort was quickly put into action as Peck’s loved ones waited to hear news of any survivors.  Then the phones of Katz and the Pecks began to ring.  In all there would be more than 35 phone calls made over the next 11 hours, all of them coming from Charles Peck’s cell phone.  When the calls were answered all that could be heard was static.  The calls were reported to authorities who used the location of Peck’s phone signals to try to find him in the rubble.  Rescuers did find Charles Peck, some 12 hours after the crash had occurred, but he was no longer among the living.

 

An autopsy performed on Charles Peck revealed that he had died instantly in the crash, yet the calls from his phone didn’t stop until an hour before his body was discovered.  So, for 11 hours after he died it seems that he continued to call for help or maybe say goodbye. Charles Peck’s phone was never recovered from the crash scene.