Senior Editor
Ted Johnson
Investigators in Georgia are trying to determine the circumstances that led to a fatal train accident that killed a crew member on the set of the Gregg Allman biopic “Midnight Rider” near Savannah, Ga., on Thursday.
The victim was identified as Sarah Jones, 27, of Atlanta, according to Ed Mathis of the Wayne County Coroner’s Office. Her parents live in West Columbia, S.C.
Sources said that she was a second camera assistant who was killed when a freight train operated by CSX Corp. struck her as crew members scrambled to get out of the way. Seven other crew members were injured, according to Wayne County Sheriff’s detective Joe Gardner, who appeared at a news conference with reporters late Thursday. He said they were treating the case as a homicide “until we have more information.”
Gardner said that the production, which came from Meddin Studios in Savannah, had permission from CSX and Rayonier, the paper and forest products company that owns land in the vicinity, “to be in that general area.”
In addition to the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department in Jesup, Ga., near where the accident occurred, officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are conducting an investigation, according to a spokesman for the agency in Atlanta. A spokesman with the National Transportation and Safety Administration said that they were aware of the accident, but he could not immediately say whether an investigation had been launched.
An eyewitness told Variety the movie crew was filming a dream sequence on a railroad trestle when a train unexpectedly crossed the bridge.
The crew, including director Randall Miller, had placed a bed on the tracks for the scene and was expecting two trains on the local bridge, one in each direction, when a third train arrived unexpectedly.
A whistle warned the crew members of the next train, giving them less than a minute, which was too late.
Miller, who also directed the 2008 film “Bottle Shock,” and the still photographer rushed to get the bed off the tracks while the rest of the crew tried to get off the bridge on a plank walkway. They were still trying to get off the bridge when the train arrived.The second camera assistant was then struck and killed by the train.
Miller had fallen onto the tracks before the train arrived but the still photographer pulled him off, according to the witness, saving his life. The bed was then hit by the train and exploded. That debris hit and injured several people, including one seriously, who was airlifted to Savannah’s Memorial Health University Medical Center.
A costume designer also suffered injuries during the accident and was admitted to the hospital while at least two other people from the crew, none seriously injured, were treated in the emergency room at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Jesup, Ga.
Starring William Hurt, Bradley Whitford, Eliza Dushku, Zoey Deutch and Tyson Ritter, “Midnight Rider” is currently set to be released by Open Road in the U.S.
Allman is also an executive producer on the film.
