Over the past several months, Upstate South Carolina has seen an increase in deaths involving railroad trains.
South Carolina was ranked in the top 10 for railroad crashes and railroad deaths in 2024, according to ABC News 4.
In 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration released statistics showing seven individuals were killed crossing tracks, along with 62 crashes.
On Feb. 7, 57-year-old James O’Neil was killed by a train in Central, South Carolina, on Watkins Street at around 9:45 a.m. He was pronounced dead on the scene, per WYFF 4 News.
Two weeks prior, a different man was hit by a train in Easley, South Carolina. Gary Knight Sr., 71, succumbed to multiple blunt force injuries on Jan. 27, according to Fox Carolina.
In November of 2025, an incident occurred on Cumberland Avenue in Easley just after 9 a.m. in which Michael Collins, a 52-year-old resident of Pickens County, was fatally struck by a train.
In September of 2025, South Carolina Public Radio released a “behind-the-scenes look at how the railroad industry impacts” South Carolina.
The report states that over the course of 2023, 2024 and 2025, there have been 163 incidents in South Carolina involving highway grade crossings, with 20 fatalities and 50 injured from collisions.
“Trains are much of a hazard today as they were when they first started rolling in South Carolina in 1827,” John Fleps, chief safety officer for Norfolk Southern, told South Carolina Public Radio.
