Video Shows Film Crew Scrambling to Escape Before Fatal Train Crash
Newly-released video shows the terrifying final seconds before a freight train slammed into the film crew of a Gregg Allman biopic last year, killing a 27-year-old camera assistant. Midnight Rider's director, Randall Miller, was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
Sarah Jones was killed in the accident, which took place as the crew was filming illegally on train tracks in southeast Georgia.
In the video, the panicked crew is seen rushing to gather their gear and get off a bridge as a freight train barreled toward them. From the Associated Press:
A train traveling at 55 mph smashed into a metal-framed bed on the tracks, sending shrapnel flying as crew members scrambled for safety and clung to the bridge's metal railing high above the Altamaha River.
"Sarah Jones was hit by the edge of the fuel tank and was run over by the train," [Assistant District Attorney John B.] Johnson told the judge. "She died instantly."
Just before the crash, the crew filmed actor William Hurt lying in a hospital bed in front of the bridge. Miller, who twice had permit requests for the shoot denied, told the judge he thought trains had stopped running on that track earlier in the day.
