Middle River hasn't forgotten Anna Marie Stickel.
Last week, about 200 local residents — mostly family and friends and neighbors of the 14-year-old girl who was killed when she was struck by an Amtrak train while walking to school — gathered for a candlelight vigil on the one-year anniversary of her death.
Tears flowed freely. Ashli McAndrew, 18, and 17-year-old April Glass held each other tightly beside the rickety fence that separates Orems Road from Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. "It's still hurting a lot of people," April said.
Feelings are still raw here in this working-class community on the less-fashionable side of Baltimore County, where high-speed tracks divide neighborhoods from the schools their children attend.
Since Anna's death, Tara Stickel has made it her mission to agitate for measures to prevent other young people from coming to harm on the tracks where her daughter died. She has been in regular contact with the office of Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who has been leaning on Amtrak to make safety improvements.
Stickel's initial hope was that a pedestrian bridge could be built as an alternative to the shortcuts across the tracks. But after being told repeatedly that it would be prohibitively expensive to build such a structure over the high-voltage wires that power Amtrak's trains, she has come to accept that what she called Anna's Bridge might be an impossible dream.
But Anna's mother is having a hard time understanding why, at the very least, Amtrak has still done nothing to replace the flimsy, dilapidated fence that has been there for decades. She doesn't quite comprehend why there's no fence at all between Rock-a-Billy's bar at the end of Middle River Road and the tracks — Amtrak's version of an open invitation to trespassers.
There is no disputing that Anna was one of those trespassers. In the wake of her death, there were many who were all too happy to point out to her grieving mother that the girl shouldn't have been there. Stickel doesn't deny it, she just has a problem with the suggestion that her daughter had it coming for an offense that some seemed to equate with murder.
If Anna deserved to die, there are a lot of people walking around Middle River today who ought to have met a similar fate. Adults at the vigil said that for generations, young people in that area have crawled through holes in Amtrak's fence to take the shortest distance from Point A to Point B rather than walk 30 minutes out of their way to get between home and Kenwood High School.
No reasonable person would expect the thousands of miles of the nation's rail network to be fully fenced in and totally secured — an impossible task. But in places such as Middle River, where there's a long stretch between legal crossings that's being used as a shortcut, railroads should at least make access difficult.
Even if the lives of the people the industry dismisses as trespassers aren't worth all that much to its executives, they should do it because every time someone is killed on their tracks, it's enormously disruptive for their customers. Several times since Anna's death, Amtrak and MARC passengers have been delayed for hours because people were able to gain access to the tracks to end their lives. It's bad for business.
Certainly, a decent fence isn't a magic bullet. Ruppersberger said that educating people about the dangers of the tracks is critical, too.
But even here, adults have been letting the kids down. At the urging of Stickel and Ruppersberger, Kenwood held an assembly about the dangers of the tracks last spring. But according to students at the vigil, the administration has dropped the topic like a hot rock.
"They shun it. They don't say anything," said Sarah Harden, the girl who narrowly escaped death with Anna last January. "It's like the accident never happened, and if you bring it up, then they shun you for it."
The school system's reticence makes it all the more necessary for Amtrak to act.
According to Ruppersberger, the railroad's crews have been out to repair the fence multiple times since Anna's death — most recently in October. But it seems that each time someone opens up a new hole.
The message is not that fencing the tracks is futile. The message is that patchwork isn't enough.
"You can't repair this fence, look at it. This is from the '70s," Stickel said.
It isn't that daunting a task. What Amtrak needs to do in Middle River is to secure 2 miles of track between Rossville Boulevard and Martin Boulevard. High-quality fencing is available. The Maryland State Highway Administration has installed better fences to protect wildlife along the new Intercounty Connector than the railroad has been willing to put up for Middle River kids.
Ruppersberger, a Democrat, says Amtrak has not said no replacing the fence. It just hasn't happened yet.
"I see a lot more cooperation with Amtrak now on this than I did when I was [Baltimore] county executive, but that still doesn't mean it's enough," Ruppersberger said. "We're going to keep working on it. It's important to our community and it's important to the kids."
So here's the message from Middle River — one that might have a familiar ring — to Amtrak CEO Joseph H. Boardman:
Mr. Boardman, tear down that fence. And put up one that isn't a joke. Before somebody else's child gets killed.
