California Teen Dies Playing Chicken With Trains, Struck And Killed By Capital Corridor Train

A 15-year-old teen dies playing chicken with moving trains. Austin Prince is known as a sweet and caring teenage boy, the type who was quick and generous to pay compliments and always asking how others are doing, according to his friends, CBS San Francisco reports.

Austin was the kind of teen who enjoyed making people laugh and would be late for class because he was picking up a friend.

According to a report by the San Francisco Gate, Austin is the type of person who would be comforting his friends and classmates at San Lorenzo High School on Friday in Alameda County, Calif, if it was not him whom his friends are grieving.

The teenager was struck and killed by a northbound Capital Corridor train when he failed to leap out of its way in time. He was playing a game of chicken with two other boys on the track near his school around 6 p.m. Thursday, according to Alameda County police.

The two other teens weren’t hurt, according to Alameda County sheriff’s Deputy April Luckett.

Many at the San Lorenzo school said that the entire community walks near the train tracks, but students hangs around them – and the high-school’s principal Tovi Scruggs said that it’s a constant worry. Signs on the fence separating the tracks and the school warn students not to tread too closely: “It’s trespassing,” it reads, “It’s dangerous. It isn’t worth it.”

According to people from the community and the school, many teenage boys play chicken, with trains. Olympia Pereira, 16, and a friend of Austin since sixth grade said, “They played all the time. It was just a game.”

Another friend of Austin said, “People won’t be by the tracks anymore.”

All day Friday, a solemn air hungs over the high school campus and it’s 1,500 students. Girls carried tissue boxes around campus, their eyes red and dazed, and visibly emotional from the previous night’s incident. A large sign hung in the main courtyard reading, “Austin, we’ll miss you.” Teachers displayed photos of the teen who was a sophomore.

The school also held several moment of silence in Austin’s honor, while grief counselors were on hand and available to offer support.

Olympia said that Austin “was a good person – one of those good people you come across everyday.” She said of the teenage boy, “he genuinely cared.”

Olympia and a group of her friends gathered on a bench at the school Friday, laughing quietly at their memories of Austin. They said he dressed as if he didn’t care what people would say or think of him. And he was always shaking out the shoulder-length hair he had been growing out since last year.