It was around 8 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 8 and Suzanne Fulton was minutes from her destination. A former Kewanee resident, Fulton now resides in Chicago. She had left the train station several hours before and was headed on the Illinois Zephyr to the city to visit her sister. The plan was to spend the night in Kewanee.

Up until that moment, the train ride had been uneventful and normal. Fulton had grown accustomed to the journey having made it many times before. But in just a few minutes, that uneventful train ride would turn into anything but.

Fulton said she remembers an announcement being made that the train would soon be arriving into the Kewanee station. She had accumulated some trash and decided to gather it up and deposit it in a trash receptacle. She was making her way to do so when the train came to a violent, sudden stop.

“It was a hard stop to the train,” she said. “It kind of threw me off.”

Fulton had only experienced a train stopping on the tracks once before after a storm had downed a tree. She remembers that incident taking two hours to resolve itself. It wasn’t long before the conductor entered her car and made an announcement.

“He said we had hit something,” she said, adding that there were children on the car and he seemed disinclined to reveal more. At that time, the conductor said the wait would be about 30 minutes.

Fulton said there weren’t many people in the front car that she was in and discussion about the incident was minimal. But after the wait stretched on for longer, the conductor returned.

Only then did his announcement confirm her suspicions. “He said ‘we’re going to be here a long time,’ but anyone with questions could go talk to him,” she said.

Because of the delay, an announcement was made that Amtrak was offering snacks and drinks in the club car and Fulton decided to make her way there. In that car, people had gathered for the free drinks and food and Fulton recalls that people were openly discussing what might have happened.

When she overheard one man state that “he could feel the train hit someone,” she sought him out and questioned him.

“For what it’s worth, the guy said he could feel it,” she said, but remembers being skeptical at the time.

It was then that Fulton decided to take the conductor up on his offer and she went to find him. When she had the opportunity she asked him point blank.

“I asked him, did we hit a car?” She said. “He replied ‘no.’ Did we hit a person, and he said ‘yes.’”

Fulton remembers weighing the possibilities of either an accident or a suicide. In the US last year, there were 995 rail fatalities. Each year approximately 220 people use the tracks to take their own lives.

But while train officials were answering questions in private they were still not making any public announcements, she said. And back at her seat, she began to look up articles online about other train incidents such as the one she was experiencing.

“I initially went online after this happened. I read stories about conductors who had been on trains that hit people. I just remember feeling badly for the conductors who had to investigate the situation. It must be hard on them,” she said.

Fulton said she was very much struck with how traumatic it all must be for the people on the scene.

“That picture will always be in their heads,” she said. “How hard it must be to live with.”

After many hours, the train began to slowly move forward and they soon pulled into the station. But even at the station, the wait would be longer and she remembers seeing emergency vehicles out the window, and had a grim thought about the task that they were performing.

Once they were allowed to disembark, they did so on the south side of the tracks, which isn’t the normal procedure, she said.

It was about a quarter to 2 in the morning and her friend was there to meet her at the station. Only then did she realize she didn’t have her key and she ended up making her way to a Kewanee motel. A computer issue at the hotel meant she didn’t get into a room until nearly 3 a.m.

At the motel desk, the receptionist filled her in on what was being reported locally on Facebook. It wouldn’t be until the next day that Kewanee police would release a statement confirming that a 40-year-old Kewanee man, lying on the tracks just north of Cernovich’s Scrap Yard, had been struck by the train.

Two days later, the Kewanee police and Henry County coroner would confirm the man’s identity as Lukas McCullough. The incident remains under investigation.

Fulton said after getting to Kewanee, she still thought about all of the passengers and children who had spent five hours on the train and whose rides weren’t finished. Many of the passengers were traveling to Quincy, she said.

For Fulton, she still thinks about that night and all of the people affected and will probably always do so.

“It’s a train ride I will always remember,” she said.