Three Minutes to Fort Totten

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'Once in a Career'

Scott Hudson, one of the first firefighters on the scene of the deadliest crash in Metrorail history, describes the day.

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Bottoms spoke the Lord's Prayer. He had recited it thousands of times, but its six simple sentences still resonated within him. "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name," he said. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

There was familiarity and comfort in those opening lines. Only an hour earlier, Bottoms had visited and prayed with about a dozen injured patients at Walter Reed, a part of his daily routine. He believed that prayer fortified the injured and pacified the dying. During a year in Iraq, he had watched over a three-bed medical clinic that sometimes overflowed with 30 patients, and those experiences returned to him in the train car: dying soldiers to whom he had administered last rites; a badly burned Iraqi man who died on the street in Bottoms's lap.

Bottoms was an Army brat from birth, trained for trauma. In Car 1079, his voice remained steady and calm.

The young woman's voice pitched and trembled. She had graduated from Largo High School in 2003, tried a few years of college in Ohio and then returned home to attend beauty school. Her mother did hair, so she decided to do hair. Fashionable and girlish, she had compiled so many outfits that she kept one closet filled with unworn garments that still bore their tags.

"Please," she said now. "I'm dying."

"You're not alone," Bottoms said. "What's your name?"

"LaVonda," she said.

"LaVonda," he said. He wanted to write it down. Another passenger handed him paper and a pen.

"Can you spell it?" he asked.

"L-a-v-o-n-d-a," she said.

"Okay. Great. And what's your last name?"

She moaned, so Bottoms repeated his question. On the second try, LaVonda King tried to spell out her last name, but her reply was sporadic, and her voice was quieter. Bottoms wrote down K-L-I-N-G on his piece of paper, adding an extra letter. "Okay," he said. "Good."

From his perch against the wall and on top of a pile of rubble, Bottoms looked out the window and spotted a police officer standing across the train tracks. Bottoms banged hard against the glass, quick jabs with the side of his fist, but the police officer walked in the opposite direction. Bottoms banged one final time in frustration. Why couldn't the officer hear him? LaVonda King was only moaning now.

"Hold on, LaVonda," Bottoms said.

He had been told once in Iraq that hearing was the last of the senses to fail before death, and he remembered that now. Maybe, somewhere beneath the chairs, carpeting and glass, LaVonda was still listening. Maybe she could hear him, even now.

"LaVonda, are you bleeding?"

No reply.

"Keep talking to me, LaVonda."

No reply.

"LaVonda."

Nothing.

Bottoms looked behind him at what remained of Car 1079. Baker was comforting the 15-year-old boy with a trapped leg while the young architect looked on. Everyone else had exited. Bottoms looked back down into the pile.

"LaVonda," he said. "I'm still right here."

* * *

The first rescuer entered Car 1079 at 5:20 p.m., climbing in through the makeshift window Daryl Smith had created. Lt. Tony Carroll approached the pile of debris and immediately evaluated the scene: a lifeless body with blood pooling near the head on the roof of the other train; two women visible in the wreckage beneath him, and other victims surely hidden underfoot.

"Okay," he called to the three firefighters rushing in behind him. "Let's get to it."

The rescuers moved quickly, casting away seats, wielding hacksaws and cutting away twisted pieces of metal. They started to free the 15-year-old boy, and Baker left his side and climbed out the exit. Only then did he think about how unfortunate he was to have made this train, and how fortunate he was to have moved from a seat in the front to the back.

A fireman sifted through a special Metro rescue bag, carried on every firetruck, which contained keys to unlock doors and specialized prying tools. One team of firefighters began working from the right side of the pile, another from the left. After 10 minutes, they cleared enough debris to reveal LaVonda King, dressed in designer jeans and a blouse, lying motionless against a pair of seats.

You don't look at the faces, Carroll had warned his men.

Bottoms looked.

LaVonda King was slight and pretty, with her hair done up nicely in a bun, still styled from an evening of celebrating with friends at Wild Wings on Friday night. She had gone there after picking up the keys to LaVonda's House of Beauty and danced late into the night. This was more than a new business, she had told friends. This was the career that would earn her money to make a trip to Atlantic City, to buy a car, to rent an apartment for her two young sons, ages 2 and 3. This was her beginning.

Bottoms knew he needed to leave, but he had to do one last thing. He reached toward LaVonda and touched his fingers to her arm. He thought he detected a pulse, but he was in the way of the firefighters now. They had 12 hours of digging ahead, a long night that would uncover a total of seven bodies under the pile. Those would be the hours in which Bottoms, Baker and the others would finally come to understand that they had crashed into another Metro train, that their car had climbed onto the back of that train as it disintegrated, that it was miraculous they had survived.

At that moment, though, what Bottoms knew was the firefighters needed him to clear out. He picked up his backpack and iPod and followed the architect through the window, and that was how the last living passenger exited Car 1079.

Staff writers William Wan, Theola Labbé-DeBose, James Hohmann, Josh White and Allison Klein contributed to this report.