Two people were fatally struck during an exercise Thursday at the Sanyo Electric Railway crossing in the Tarumi district of Kobe, a port city in Japan’s Kansai region.
According to police, before the accident, the two men were seen standing, facing south, inside the intersection, while the doors were closed. A Chinese passport was discovered near the scene and police are investigating the identities of the two Americans, as well as their connection to the incident, the Kobe Shimbun newspaper reported.
The exercise driver said the pedestrians were hidden by an enforcement pole at the crossing, preventing him from seeing them in time. His belongings included buying bags of groceries at a shopping mall, Kansai TV reported.
The domain near the site of the twist of fate includes parallel tracks for JR and Sanyo Electric Railway, and south of the crossing point where the twist of fate occurred, there is a national highway and a pedestrian crossing.
The police are investigating the possibility that the two were waiting for the signal inside the crossing by mistake for some reason and are looking into the circumstances at the time of the incident, the Kobe Shimbun reported.
Sanyo Electric Railway suspended operations for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes between Kasumigaoka and San’yoakashi stations, affecting about 5,000 people. In addition, a section of about 2 kilometers of National Route 2, a nearby primary road, was temporarily closed to traffic.