A PASSENGER was killed after being struck by four trains on the London Underground before anyone noticed.
The accident happened at Stratford station after Brian Mitchell, 72, man fell onto the tracks and disappeared out of sight.
PAA Jubilee line train and platform at Stratford station in east London[/caption]
He had been struck multiple times before services were stopped, according to a report by the Rail Accident Investigation Branch.
The incident happened on Boxing Day 2023.
The report added that a “reduced alertness or distraction” of train operators could have played a role in why trains weren’t halted sooner.
Mr Mitchell had been sitting on a platform bench at around 2.45pm when he stood up and “immediately stumbled forwards and fell from the platform onto the adjacent track”, the report said.
There was no one else on the platform at the time.
Mr Mitchell then “lay on the track undiscovered for around five minutes before being struck by an arriving train, which then stopped normally on the platform”.
Another three trains hit him as they also entered the platform and travelled “through the location where the passenger was lying”.
The report suggests the first train driver failed to notice Mr Mitchell “possibly because their level of attention was reduced due to the use of automatic train operation”.
It added that the operator may have also been distracted by another operator on the platform.
The third driver is reported to have seen “something” on the tracks but “did not recognise what they saw as being a person”, which led to “more severe” consequences.
A fourth train was not stopped by staff “even though the assistant was by now aware that a person was on the track”.
The report said: “Although the operator of the fourth inbound train had independently recognised that there was a person on the track, they did not stop their train.
“The train operators working the trains in the outbound direction were not aware of the passenger because the passenger was underneath their respective trains before they departed.”
The police were alerted to the incident at around 3.30pm – around 45 minutes after Mr Mitchell fell.
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