Train Kills Seven on Reality TV Show
By ARIEL GONZALEZ
The Associated Press
Friday, March 17, 2006; 9:19 PM
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – Seven residents of a Uruguayan town were killed on Friday when they were run over by a train they were moving manually as part of a reality television show aimed at raising funds for a local hospital, police said.
Several hundred townspeople from Young, about 235 miles west of the capital of Montevideo, were hauling a locomotive and two attached cars down a track _ pushing and pulling from different sides when some participants fell under the wheels, said a police department spokesman.
Several other people were hurt in Friday’s accident, three of them critically.
Eyewitness Ana Portela told a local radio station that the train was moving when “somebody slipped and fell under the locomotive, and others were falling alongside it.”
“There were shouts and somebody said ‘my arm!’” Portela said. “Everybody was in a state of shock.”
The residents were taking part in the program “A Challenge to the Heart,” in which Uruguayan communities can raise funds for local charities by completing difficult tasks set by the network, in this case moving a train a certain distance down railroad tracks.
“We’re deeply saddened and Channel 10 offers its solidarity and support to the families involved in this unexpected tragedy that came, in fact, while they were trying to help others,” said a spokeswoman for the network airing the reality show.