A Canadian Pacific Kansas City freight train struck a van at a crossing near Wiggins, killing five of the six people inside and leaving one young woman hospitalized.
A crossing, a collision, five families changed forever
A train traveling through rural southern Mississippi struck a van at a railroad crossing on Friday, killing five of the six people inside. The sole survivor, a 23-year-old woman, was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition. No one aboard the train was reported injured.
Stone County Coroner Wayne Flurry confirmed the deaths and identified all five victims. The dead included the van’s driver, Ryan C. Peterson, 26, and front-seat passenger Kristina Carver, 45. Two of Carver’s daughters, Emley Chamblee, 22, and Sarabeth Chamblee, 20, also died at the scene, along with 23-year-old Demarcus Perkins.
The collision took place near Wiggins, a small town roughly 45 miles northwest of Biloxi, in a part of Mississippi where freight lines cross two-lane roads with little more than a signal and a gate standing between a vehicle and a passing train.
The train and the crossing
The train involved was operated by Canadian Pacific Kansas City, one of North America’s major freight railroads. The company confirmed in a statement that one of its trains struck a vehicle at a crossing and said the Stone County Sheriff’s Office was leading the investigation into how the crash occurred.
In a brief public statement, the railroad extended its condolences to the victims’ families. The company offered no additional details about the train’s speed, the condition of the crossing equipment or whether any warnings were active at the time of impact.
Railroad crossing accidents remain a persistent and underreported danger across the United States. According to federal transportation data, hundreds of people die each year in collisions between trains and vehicles at grade crossings, with rural crossings posing a disproportionately high share of that risk. Many of those crossings lack the full gate systems found at busier intersections with road traffic.
The victims
The five people who died ranged in age from 20 to 45. The presence of a mother and her two daughters among the victims added a particular weight to an already devastating scene. Carver, 45, and her daughters Emley and Sarabeth Chamblee died together in a crash that also claimed two other young people who were with them.
Peterson, identified as the driver, was 26. Perkins, the fifth victim, was 23, the same age as the woman who survived. Her identity was not released, and her condition as of Friday evening had not been publicly updated beyond the initial report that she had been flown to a hospital.
What comes next
The Stone County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation with support from the railroad, which has its own incident response team. Investigators will likely examine whether the crossing’s warning systems were functioning properly, the speed of the train at the time of impact, and the sequence of events that led the van onto the tracks.
Crossing safety has drawn renewed federal attention in recent years following a string of high-profile accidents. The Federal Railroad Administration has pushed for upgrades at thousands of rural crossings nationwide, though funding and prioritization have remained persistent obstacles.
For the families of the five people killed near Wiggins on Friday, those broader questions are unlikely to offer much comfort. What happened at that crossing in a matter of seconds left a mark that no investigation can undo.