Woman rode train home to Puyallup but didn’t get off. What happened aboard the Sounder?

Chelsey James boarded Sound Transit’s Sounder train in Seattle one afternoon and planned to get off at her home stop in Puyallup. She didn’t.

James’ husband expected her to call when she arrived at her destination or, at least, answer his several attempts to reach her. She didn’t.

Instead, James continued to ride on past the Tacoma Dome Station, the South Tacoma Station and the Lakewood Station. She still didn’t depart the train with other passengers.

On July 28, 2021, James suffered at least one seizure and passed out before the train reached Puyallup, waking up to find herself locked on the parked train at Sound Transit’s Century Yard in Lakewood, where the transportation agency stores trains overnight for cleaning and light maintenance, according to a recently filed lawsuit in Pierce County Superior Court.

Citing an internal email from a Sound Transit official on the day of the incident, the legal complaint said that James, who’d been lying on the floor at one point, pulled an emergency window and frantically screamed for help before a conductor from a different train noticed and attended to her.

The suit, filed March 22, alleged that Sound Transit and contractor Securitas Security Services were negligent and failed to follow policies after missing James during a routine sweep for any remaining passengers at Lakewood Station, leaving her on the train as it proceeded to Sound Transit’s nearby layover yard. Following a 4:35 p.m. departure from Seattle, and expecting to make it to Puyallup at 5 p.m., James was discovered between 6 and 6:30 p.m., according to internal agency records provided to The News Tribune by her legal counsel.

Attorney Mark O’Halloran, who is representing James in the lawsuit, said in an interview that his client’s medical condition created “a dangerous situation,” which was compounded by her phone being stolen while she was unconscious. He said public records indicated Sound Transit’s own policy was to perform a sweep of the train, and his client alleged that such an inspection would have only required “a modicum of diligence” to notice her.

“My client was terrified when she became conscious after a medical event and was locked on a public train in an after-hours storage yard,” O’Halloran said. “The obvious concern is that it does no good to have policies in place to prevent this kind of harm if the duties are not being performed or are being performed negligently.”

David Jackson, a spokesperson for Sound Transit, declined a request to address the lawsuit for this story.

“Since this is active litigation, we won’t have any comment at this time,” Jackson said in a statement.

A message left with Securitas’ office in Seattle was not returned.

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Waking up locked on a Sound Transit train is not unprecedented.

In 2018, a woman fell asleep on a southbound train to Lakewood and awoke in the layover yard about a mile from the Lakewood Station, KING 5 previously reported. A 911 dispatcher helped the woman find the emergency exit, and Sound Transit, acknowledging that the woman’s car had incorrectly gone unchecked during the sweep, told the news station it was working with its contractor to ensure the error would not be repeated.

In James’ case, the security officer responsible for the sweep documented in an incident report that he thoroughly inspected the train and “did not locate any unauthorized individuals on board the out of service trains during my sweep,” according to a copy of the report provided to The News Tribune by O’Halloran.

After she was found, James, now 31, had four observed seizures while speaking with a train conductor and a different security officer, who provided assistance so she wouldn’t injure herself, according to an incident report cited in the lawsuit. The officer also observed that a train car window had been removed and noted the conductor relayed details to James’ husband by cell phone about his wife’s situation and whereabouts.

Prior to then, James’ husband had called his wife, a surgery scheduler in Seattle, several times to no avail. Due to her medical condition, the pair share their phone location with each other, O’Halloran said, and hers showed that she was in Graham.

James’ husband followed the ping, which led to a home where he confronted a man who claimed that he had found James’ phone on the train, according to O’Halloran. To the best of his knowledge, no police report was ever filed over the phone, O’Halloran said.

James’ husband didn’t learn what happened to his wife until Sound Transit called him. He picked up James from the layover yard shortly before 7:30 p.m., according to an incident report. Both reportedly denied offers to get her medical attention.

O’Halloran said that James later received medical treatment related to the incident, and the lawsuit was filed because Sound Transit denied liability for any action or inaction it took that day.

The suit is seeking unspecified damages to be proven at trial, legal fees and other relief deemed appropriate by the court.