Train Accident Victim Dies
By DENISE LAVOIE, AP
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - The 10-year-old Ecuadorean boy who was struck and
gravely injured by a train that killed his mother and three brothers died today.
Jose Francisco Urgiles Toledo was declared brain-dead at Bridgeport Hospital two
days after the accident. His family agreed to donate his organs.
The boy, his brothers and their mother were struck by an Amtrak train from
behind as they walked across a trestle in the middle of the night. He lost most of his
left leg and suffered severe head injuries and broken bones.
His mother, Julia Toledo, 47, and brothers, ages 3, 6 and 11, were killed
instantly. Jose was so badly hurt that relatives originally misidentified him as the
6-year-old. Investigators are still not certain why the family was walking the
tracks at that hour, but believe she was trying to get somewhere, not commit suicide.
Friends and family members said Ms. Toledo, who came to the United States about
a year and a half ago, was struggling to hold together her family, hold down a job and
keep a home. Friends have also noted that it is a common practice in Latin American
countries to walk along railroad tracks. Ms. Toledo's husband had returned to their
native Ecuador, and she had filed for divorce in 1998, a case that was later dropped
because Ms. Toledo had not been a resident of Bridgeport long enough to file suit.
In addition, day care had been difficult to find, and Ms. Toledo had recently
quit her job to care for the children. Toledo had moved out of a Bridgeport
apartment and into a shelter, and police Officer Jose Reyes - who knew the family - told
The Hartford Courant that Ms. Toledo feared her sister was trying to have her committed to
a mental hospital and take guardianship of the youngsters.
In Ecuador, Ms. Toledo's estranged husband, Carlos Urgiles, a farm laborer in
the Andean town of Cojitambo, said in a TV interview earlier Thursday that he was stunned
to hear of the deaths of his wife and three of his sons.
``I have a great pain in my chest. It hurts to have lost my senora and
children,'' Urgiles said, sobbing. Urgiles, 52, said he never got to say goodbye to
his children when he returned from the United States more than a year ago because his
wife's sister and her family would not let him see them.
The families frequently clashed because Urgiles' family is Catholic and his
sister-in-law's is Mormon, he said. He said he decided to return to Ecuador because of the
fights over religion. Urgiles' friends and family members in Cojitambo are trying to
collect money to send him to Connecticut.
In Ecuador, a South American nation of 12 million, people attributed the
family's death to their nation's poverty. ``The death of this woman and her children
is due to the desperation we Ecuadoreans feel to leave the country because of economic
problems. There is no work here,'' Quito shopkeeper Bernardo Delgado said Wednesday.
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