Nov. 12 — The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner has said the person who was killed by a Caltrain on Thursday in Palo Alto is Jeremiah Chapman, 47, of Palo Alto.
The Chapman was killed at around 3:30 p.m. at the crossing at Alma Street and Palo Alto Avenue.
Nov. 10 — Caltrain has refused to provide information about the death, citing its policy of blacking out news coverage in order to discourage copycats. The Medical Examiner’s Office has not determined whether Chapman’s death was an accident or not.
But the news blackout has made it difficult for the community to know whether people they know were killed.
Last year, 19 people died on the Caltrain tracks, the most since 2015. After the surge in deaths, a group of parents said they plan to revive a volunteer group to monitor the tracks.
If you take a look at the Caltrain Reddit group on that day, there are numerous eyewitness accounts of the incident that are very, very disturbing. Although obviously those of primary concern are the victim and his family, it is genuinely upsetting for community members to have to witness something like this and not have any information about what happened. So I hope a middle ground can be reached between preventing copycats versus informing the community.
I saw the aftermath of this and really want closure along with the rest of the people on the train. Can you please tell us more about what happened?