Chicago Train director commits suicide by stepping in front of train

[Liberal_in_LA]

Chicago train line director apparently commits suicide

(CNN) -- The man credited with making Chicago's Metra commuter train line one of the best in the country is an apparent suicide, killed Friday by the train he himself rode five days a week for more than two decades.

Shortly before 8 a.m., Phil Pagano drove to a parking lot about two miles from his home in unincorporated Crystal Lake in suburban Chicago, walked onto a track where someone had committed suicide three years ago and stepped in front of an oncoming Metra train, McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren told reporters.

The train's lone engineer "saw a man standing on the tracks turning and looking at the train," Nygren said. "There was eye contact, he felt, between himself and the victim."

Pagano, Metra's executive director, made no attempt to step off the tracks, and the train, which was traveling between 45 mph and 55 mph, could not stop in time, Nygren said.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/07/illinois.metra.suicide/index.html

Pagano's death came a week after Metra announced it was investigating whether the 60-year-old married father of two daughters got an unauthorized vacation payout last year of $56,000, said Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet.