UK: Student killed in freak accident at Stratford DLR station after falling on to tracks during epileptic fit

A student was hit and killed by a driverless Docklands Light Railway train at the Stratford station when she had an epileptic fit and fell on to the train tracks.

The economics student from Lithuania, Erika Skuseviciute, 27, was visiting her boyfriend Ricardas Svedkaliskas, 36, in north Woolwich to celebrate the couple's 10<sup>th anniversary when she was killed in October 2013.

Speaking of his girlfriend, Svedkaliskas said: "Erika was a very intelligent, beautiful and caring woman with a bright future."

He told The Evening Standard: "The morning of her death she told me she had a bad dream about me dying. She was quite shaken up by it but I told her not to worry. We had so many plans for our future together - I can't believe she's gone."

Skuseviciute was reportedly on the phone with her boyfriend when she fell on to the tracks and died instantly.

"I was on the phone to her and then it suddenly just cut out. I thought the connection had just gone. I started getting worried when she didn't return home on time. And then the police came soon after seven and I just knew what they were going to tell me, I knew she was dead," said Svedkaliskas.

The student was hit by the approaching train approximately 12 seconds after she fell off platform 17 at the Stratford station in east London, heard an inquest last week at the Walthamstow coroner's court.

Despite a passenger on the train alerting the passenger service assistant and an emergency button being pressed on the platform, Skuseviciute could not be saved.

"I believe there should always be a passenger service assistant at the front of the train and more emergency buttons on the platform and the train to avoid such incidents in the future," said Svedkaliskas.

Meanwhile, DLR director Rory O'Neill said that even if emergency brakes had been applied by a driver, there was no guarantee the train would have come to a halt in time to prevent the death.

O'Neill said that there had been only two deaths on the DLR in the past 10 years, reported The Mirror.

He told the inquest that DLR trains are driverless and steered by computers. However, they are carefully monitored through CCTV cameras at control centres.

An accidental death verdict was eventually recorded by coroner Dr Shirley Radcliffe.

"There was 12 seconds in between her falling on the track and the train passing over her," said Dr Radcliffe.

"In that time, even if someone had pressed the button on the platform it's not possible to say on the balance of probability that the train would have stopped. It's simply an unfortunate accident."