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Teen killed by train while hiking along Virginia bridge

Posted at 1:04 PM, Jun 30, 2017
and last updated 2017-06-30 13:05:20-04

BURKE, Va. --  Reyhan Safoglu was full of energy and life, her mom recalled.

The 13-year-old Fairfax girl played multiple sports and instruments, sang and was on the cheerleading team.

Reyhan was killed Wednesday while hiking near Clifton, Virginia, with her brother and a cousin.

The group was walking along train tracks.

Reyhan and her 13-year-old cousin Michael Lorenz were on the Bull Run Bridge while her brother Baris waited below.

That's when they heard the train whistle.

"I was screaming, 'Move, move out of the way,' but I didn’t know where they were," Baris said.

Lorenz jumped off the track, but -- out of fear or shock -- he said Reyhan did not.

"She just started to run and I’m like, 'Reyhan, jump,' and she just kept running. And then the train came," he said.

She was struck.

Baris and train workers attempted first aid, but were unable to save Reyhan's life.

"She was just a vibrant, courageous, adventurous," her mother Emel said as a train passed by their home and blew its whistle. "And that’s, we get to live with the train passing by our house everyday now. Knowing that one of those trains is the trains that hit my daughter, but, that was her destiny. It’s OK. She used to love hearing the trains pass by and now I guess it's just going to remind us of her. I'm not going to think of her death, I'm just going to remember her every time I hear the train. And I'm going to remember how she just made everybody happy."

Two GoFundMe pages have been set up to help Safoglu's family pay for funeral costs.

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