A male student at Houston ISD’s Milby High School died Monday morning after he was hit by a train near campus on the city’s southeast side, Houston police and HISD officials said.
The crash occurred near the campus at roughly 7:35 a.m, according to the Houston Police Department.
HPD Detective Sgt. Bill Elsbury said investigators are reviewing whether the male student accidentally fell while trying to cross the tracks ahead of the train. Witnesses reported that train crossing warnings, including gate arms and flashing lights, were working at the intersection, Elsbury said.
"The train was described (as traveling) at a fairly slow speed, and the individual just tried to cross the tracks in front of the train and maybe stumbled, tripped or fell,” Elsbury said.
Police and school district officials have not named the student or said whether he was commuting to school.
HISD said its crisis response team is responding to provide support to Milby High students and staff. HPD asked civilians to avoid the area and use alternate routes. Red cones and an HISD Police vehicle blocked Broadway Street before the crossing until the train was moved at around 1:30 p.m. Monday.
School commutes that require students to cross train tracks, sometimes involving skirting between stopped and slow-moving trains, has been a well-known, longtime issue in Houston. In 2005, a 13-year-old boy walking to Deady Middle School slipped and had his legs crushed while trying to hop a train roughly a quarter-mile from the scene of Monday's incident. The boy's family said at the time that doctors amputated both legs below the knee.
The vast majority of HISD students do not take buses to school because the district doesn’t offer transportation to them, the result of Texas law that only provides school districts with transportation funding for students who live more than two miles from campus. In HISD, principals can ask the district to provide bus service to students who live in a "hazardous transportation zone" within two miles of campus on a case-by-case basis.
Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia, who represents the precinct covering Milby High, said in a statement that train lines on the city's east side "fuel the regional economy but too often put the health and safety of East End residents at risk." Garcia said he has worked with city and federal officials to take steps to improve safety along train tracks, such as adding street overpasses.
"We are grieving the death of a young man in Precinct 2 — a Milby High School student whose death this morning was related to one of the many train lines in Houston’s East End," Garcia said.
Victor Villafana, whose daughter attends Milby High, said a train was stopped on the tracks this morning for unknown reasons. So Villafana helped his daughter walk under the train.
"I told her, 'Come, daughter,' and we both went under the train, and I came back under back to my car, leaving her on the other side," Villafana said.
Villafana said trains shouldn't be allowed to pass during the beginning and end of the school day. He said the change should be made "now, before there are more accidents."
"The poor child, that family, because Christmas is on its way. How will they spend it?” Villafana said.
Milby High, located in Houston’s Pecan Park neighborhood, enrolled about 2,200 students in 2023-24, roughly 95 percent of whom were Latino.
Team leader Jacob Carpenter contributed to this report.
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