Four were killed when a vehicle collided with an Amtrak train in Lakeland.
ROBERT BURKE / The Tampa Tribune

By BILLY TOWNSEND
The Tampa Tribune

Surveillance Video Of The Wreck | Photos From The Scene

LAKELAND - Police have formally identified the four young adults killed in Monday afternoon’s fatal collision between their car and an Amtrak train.

The dead are: Brittany Stickney, 18 8/19/88, Whitney Pressnell, 11/22/86 20, Brian Guy, 5/3/85 24, and Ciara Benafield, 5/15/87 20. All had recent Lakeland addresses.

A grainy videotape of the crash, shot from a nearby Publix warehouse, shows that the crossing gates lowered before the red car reached the intersection, as eyewitnesses said.

But it offers additional insight into what happened.

Just prior to the crash, the car was headed east on Old Tampa Highway, which becomes Olive Street at the intersection with Wabash Avenue, which is the site of the crossing. The tape shows the car approach the crossing after the gates drop. A truck in front of it turns left off of Old Tampa Highway and stops at the crossing gate in the northbound lane.

The victims’ car makes the same turn north onto Wabash, but cuts inside the truck without fully stopping and appears to accelerate around the gate, in the middle of the Wabash Avenue.

It crosses the first and second of three lines, but the eastbound Amtrak train hits it flush, virtually disappearing. The car and the front of the train are quickly off the screen.

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