Train Kills Worker at Dupont Stop

A Metro employee was struck and killed by a train yesterday at Dupont Circle Station as he performed routine track maintenance, the second workplace fatality the subway system has suffered in seven months.

The accident closed the Dupont and Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan stations on the Red Line for most of the day and left travelers scrambling to board crowded buses that Metro provided to shuttle passengers along Connecticut Avenue NW. Metro officials said trains will be operating normally by today.

Candace Smith, a Metro spokeswoman, said Jong Won Lee, 49, of Springfield was working on track equipment about 50 yards from an entrance to the station when he was hit by a train about 10:15 a.m. She said two employees working nearby were unharmed.

"We believe it was an industrial accident," Smith said. "But it will probably be a month before we know the cause."

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, and Metro officials will conduct a separate internal safety probe.

"To be struck by a train on the right of way, there had to be a misstep somewhere," Metro safety chief Fred Goodine said.

Metro had reopened the two stations by 8 last night.

In October, a 47-year-old track worker died after he was hit by a train as he bent over to pick up a piece of equipment along the Yellow and Blue Line tracks near the Braddock Road stop in Alexandria. He was the first Metro employee to die on the job since 1997.

An internal safety investigation of that accident concluded that a Metro supervisor and the train operator failed to follow basic safety rules. It found that the worker's supervisor didn't inform Metro's control center, which monitors all train movement, that workers were on the track bed. The investigation also found that the train operator broke safety rules when he didn't blow his horn after seeing the workers on the tracks.

The failures were so serious that Metro took the unusual step of requiring about 4,000 track and operations workers to complete refresher training in safety procedures. Goodine said about 3,000 workers have completed the course. He said he will be reviewing whether the workers involved in yesterday's fatality were among them.

The train operator will be removed from operating duties while the accident is investigated, as is customary, Goodine said.

Jim Southworth, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator who was at the Dupont Circle Station, said the workers were able to get clear of a northbound train moments before the accident. Metro officials said Lee, who had worked for Metro since 1999, apparently stepped back to avoid the northbound train and was hit by a southbound train. Safety officials will investigate whether Metro's control center had been notified that work was being done on the tracks.

While the two stations were closed, Metro ran trains between Cleveland Park and Shady Grove and between Farragut North and Glenmont. Shuttle buses carried riders between Cleveland Park and Farragut North.

At Dupont Circle yesterday afternoon, the shuttles were almost completely full. Passengers, some of whom were caught in the rain without umbrellas, begged to get on, but drivers turned many of them away.

Andene Dunkley, 36, who works at the nearby Residence Inn, looked confused as packed shuttles kept driving past her. "I can stand! I can stand!" she shouted to one driver. Eventually, she gave up and hailed a cab.

Staff writers Lena H. Sun, Nikita Stewart and Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.