WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A 76-year-old woman has died after her vehicle was hit by a freight train Wednesday in West Palm Beach.
The crash occurred shortly before 5:30 p.m. at the railroad crossing along Quadrille Boulevard and Fern Street.
West Palm Beach police said the driver, a woman in her 60s, was extricated from the vehicle and rushed to a hospital in "very critical condition," where she later died.
Witnesses said several ambulances were at the scene. One person described the incident saying the train "plowed into a car."
"And I heard all the ambulances going by, like, it was literally like a zoo," a downtown West Palm Beach resident said. "It was like a carnival going by."
Traffic in the area was impacted for hours.
"To give you some perspective, I was supposed to go across the tracks, five-minute walk that way to get something notarized, and instead it took an hour and a half to drive around the entire city," another resident said.
Even though the crash occurred near the Brightline train station, the Brightline train schedule was not impacted.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration's website, this is the seventh crash involving a train and a vehicle in West Palm Beach so far this year.