The girlfriend of Bravo reality TV star Greg Plitt told police the actor and fitness trainer mistakenly thought he was running on an adjacent track when he was struck and killed by a Metrolink train in Burbank while filming a sports drink promotion, according to an autopsy report released Friday.
Plitt, a bodybuilder and former Calvin Klein model, was struck at 4:07 p.m. on Jan. 17 by a Metrolink southbound train approaching the Burbank station. Plitt, who sometimes ran alongside the trains at that location for exercise, and his friends were filming exercises to show the effects of the energy drinks, according to an account by Plitt’s girlfriend, Christina Ursula Stejskal, which was relayed to a Burbank police detective and included in his autopsy report.
Stejskal, who was reportedly not at the scene during the incident, told police that when Plitt and his friends heard the sound of an approaching train, they decided to film him “running along side of it,” according to the account.
“Stejskal said that the decedent and the other individual thought that the train was traveling on another set of tracks, adjacent to the set of tracks that the decedent was standing in,” according to the account. “The train traveled closer and the decedent began running in front of it in the same direction of travel. When the train was close to the decedent’s body, the decedent was said to have attempted to run out of its path” before he was struck.
Metrolink spokesman Jeff Lustgarten confirmed that “there is an inactive track adjacent to the one he was running on” but that Plitt “was running on the track that the train was on.”
A Metrolink official previously told this news organization that video of the event appeared to indicate that “Mr. Plitt was aware of the train as it was approaching from behind.”
“Whether he knew he was on the tracks the train was on, or thought he was on adjacent track, either way, it was a very, very dangerous act and, unfortunately, in this case, one that ended very tragically,” Lustgarten said.
No one at the Burbank Police Department was available Friday to comment on Stejskal’s account. Police have said that the train’s horn sounded for at least 10 seconds before the accident.
Plitt’s friends “wanted to capture a recording of the decedent running along side of the train,” according to a summary in the autopsy report relayed by Burbank police Detective K. Schiffner. As the train continued south toward him, Plitt went into a “three-point stance” on a train track as the other individuals were alongside videotaping him. When the train traveled closer, Plitt began running in front of the train. He continued to do so until he was “clipped” by the front end of the train, according to the detective’s account.
Plitt, who died of multiple blunt force injuries, had “insignificant amounts” of methamphetamine and MDMA, or Ecstasy, in his system but not enough to be considered a contributing factor in his death, said Craig Harvey of the L.A. County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner.
“If the doctor felt that the drug level was at such (an amount) that it would have impaired his safety, or caused him to do something that a normal person wouldn’t do without the drug, it would have been a part of the cause of the death but it’s not because the amount was so small,” he said.
State workplace safety inspectors are currently investigating whether two beverage companies bear any responsibility in Plitt’s death.
