On a Wednesday morning in August, Sangjin Lee, an immigrant from South Korea, left his $8-an-hour job as a bakery deliveryman, went through the turnstile at the West Falls Church Metro station and headed to the eastbound platform. He told his co-workers at Vie de France Yamazaki in Vienna that he had some things he needed to do.
A six-car train bound for New Carrollton entered the station. Suddenly, there was a loud thud on the tracks, followed by an awful scream.
Lee, 46, had thrown himself onto the tracks in front of the approaching train. He was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m.
Lee is one of eight men and women this year who have used Metro to end their lives, in what transit officials say is the largest number of such deaths in recent years.
Experts say some who kill themselves this way act impulsively; others plan it. Just 1 percent to 2 percent of the 33,300 people who take their lives in the United States every year choose a subway, commuter or freight train to do it, according to the American Association of Suicidology.
Some chose to die on tracks near their home or work. Several displayed or had received a diagnosis of a mental disorder. Lee, his wife said, had grown up in an abusive family.
"It's fair to say that people who engage in such a violent and traumatic method of suicide are more disturbed psychiatrically," said Lanny Berman, executive director of the suicide association, a prevention group in the third year of a five-year study into track suicides for the Federal Railroad Administration. "Taking pills doesn't always produce death, whereas jumping in front of a subway car is almost always lethal."
Since 2006, at least 17 people have died on Metro's tracks, according to reports in the transit agency's news release database.
Some gave their family and friends a hint of what they were going to do. Lee was living in Northern Virginia, working a job that an immigration lawyer had found him and that he hoped would lead to a green card, while his wife, Mina Cho Lee, and their two children lived in Illinois.
Lee e-mailed her that he was depressed and hated his job. In his small apartment in Arlington County, she found a newspaper clipping of another tragedy, the Metro crash that killed nine people.
