A father whose 5-year-old boy was killed by a train Thursday while playing near train tracks in Watauga said he is searching for answers and looking for a way to give meaning to his son's death.
Five-year-old Kevin Bradford's older brother, Josh, told his father, Tony Bradford, that he tried to save his older brother the night he and two others went on the train tracks behind their apartment.
"This is what my son, my 5-year-old, made in school," Mr. Bradford said while holding up a drawing of a lion. "One of the last things he made in school, I guess."
Since that fatal Thursday night, Mr. Bradford said he has had many questions about how and why his son died.
"Was it a big hole in the fence you went through or a small hole?" he asked his son.
The hole is where Josh said he, Kevin and other children sometimes crawled through to get to the tracks to look for special rocks and bones.
"It was this wide," Josh replied while holding out his arms.
Josh said while the apartment manager had fixed the hole before, some kids broke through again.
"The eighth time is when they wanted to look for dinosaur bones because they saw the dog bones," Josh said.
That eighth time was the night Kevin died on the rails.
Mr. Bradford said he doesn't understand why the nearby crossing is designated a quiet area, which means engineers are not required to sound the horn.
"Somebody needs a wake up call," he said. "I mean, there's a sign that says quiet zone, train will not sound horn behind a major apartment complex full of kids."
Union Pacific Railroad said the engineer hit the horn and the brakes when he saw the children, but Josh told his father he didn't hear the horn. He also said he tried to save Kevin, but his foot became caught on the rail.
"I held onto his hand and pulled him and pulled him, but he was too heavy," he said. "Then my hand slipped off of him."
Mr. Bradford said he believes Kevin actually pushed Josh away from the tracks.
"He saved my son's life," he said.
