Adam Tuss, wtop.com

WASHINGTON – The afternoon of June 22, 2009 started out like so many others for Patrick Tuite. A summer teacher at Catholic University, the Kensington, Md. resident hopped on the Red Line to get to his afternoon class.
Little did he know, his trip that day would change his life forever.

It was a hot day, filled with brilliant sunshine. Tuite, who normally rode on the first car of the train, decided to stand in front of an air conditioner on the platform at the Wheaton Station. Because Tuite lined up in front of the air conditioner, he entered the second rail car of train 112 — the train that would slam into the back of a stopped six-car train minutes later.

For the first time since the crash, Tuite came back to the crash scene recently to talk with WTOP. Standing on top of the New Hampshire Avenue bridge, which overlooks the Red Line tracks, he recalled the crash.

“We got off the train and looked forward, and saw that the first car had been ripped apart, and that the top half was hanging in the air in a way that was just unimaginable. It just didn’t fit into the routine that you are used to. All the sudden, that was ripped apart in the same way the train was. Nothing seemed normal again.”

Amazingly, Tuite walked away from the crash with no physical scars — but the emotional pain continues.

“I have gone to see somebody about it, and that helped,” says Tuite. “I guess there’s something, though, because when I get on the train, you just get tense. You just tense up. Anytime I do find myself in, say, the first car — it is so scary. It is so stressful.”

Tuite says he won’t ride that much anymore. The last few weeks have made the experience even harder.

“I didn’t realize that when the weather changed, and you are wearing the same outfit — going to teach the same class — that suddenly being on the train would just make you feel afraid, or just anxious and stressed out.”

“You just feel like you are totally vulnerable and you have no sense of control, and you don’t trust the people that put this thing together. You suffer, the other passengers suffer, and certainly that operator.”

“I have to be honest, I think about that operator all the time — what she must have thought and felt when she came around the corner and saw that other train parked there. I’m really angry.”

(Copyright 2010 by WTOP. All rights reserved.)