A Just End to Trestle Nightmare

[NS Newsfeed]

Jonathan Gregoire should be getting his bachelor's degree this Saturday from Liberty University, celebrating with family and friends a milestone in his young life.



He had his entire life before him. A senior at Liberty University, beloved by his friends and fellow students, a young man with a bright future.



But ...



On the night of Nov. 8, he and a group of friends headed out to Riverside Park with plans to get out on the James River trestle. The views of the river and the Blue Ridge Mountains and the beauty of the night sky were just too alluring.



It was a choice the six friends made that had deadly, life-changing consequences.



As Gregoire and Victoria Bridges, along with two others, were out on the trestle, one of Gregoire's favorite spots in Lynchburg and one he frequented often, a Norfolk Southern train rounded the bend and was bearing down on them.



Esther Tawi Baseme and Mariah Wesley Kerner ran for the lives and were able to make it back to the Lynchburg side of the tracks safely. Gregoire and Bridges were further out and weren't so lucky. The train passed over Bridges just after she had fallen to the tracks, but she sustained a severe injury to her back in the process. Gregoire was struck full-on; his leg was severed just above the ankle and his body fell more than 200 feet to the ground below, sustaining injuries that likely caused his immediate death.



According to Lynchburg Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Doucette, the trestle has claimed the lives of 13 people since 1969, even though it's heavily posted with "No Trespassing" signs and fenced off.



Doucette knew he had to take some action, make some statement to try to deter future thrill seekers and prevent more tragedies. That's why, after consulting with the Lynchburg Police Department and Norfolk Southern, he charged the survivors — Baseme, Kerner and brothers Kalvin Lance Reynolds and Keenan Luke Reynolds —with trespassing, a Class 1 misdemeanor. (Bridges, who is in Oregon, has not yet been served with her warrant, according to Doucette.)



Last week, the case went before Lynchburg General District Court Judge Ed Burnette who signed off on a plea agreement with the four other students. For the most part, it's a standard plea but one with an important twist: The students will take part in the production of a safety video recounting for viewers the horrific details of that fateful night, why they ventured out on the trestle, the memories of the train bearing down on them and the horror they witnessed as it struck their two friends.



Doucette's office, which will coordinate production of the video, plans to make it available to local colleges to show incoming freshmen and new students to warn them of the trestle's deadly attraction. It's a just conclusion to a tragic story that has occurred far too many times over the course of the last decades. If the video deters just one person from venturing out on the trestle, it will have done its job. But we hope it will save many.