A fitness model and actor who was killed when he was hit by a train was running on the tracks ahead of the train while filming a promotional video for his website, police said on Tuesday.
Detectives have reviewed video from a camera atop the Metrolink commuter train that shows 37-year-old George Gregory Plitt Jr running between the rails on Saturday, Burbank police Officer Joshua Kendrick said.
“The conductor can see somebody on the tracks a distance away,” Kendrick said. The conductor was braking and using the horn, “and for one reason or another, unfortunately, Mr Plitt did not get off the tracks.”
The train eventually struck Plitt, and he left the view of the camera, Kendrick said.
He said detectives were trying to get another video filmed by friends of Plitt from a different angle.
Friends initially said Plitt had misjudged the situation and tripped and fell before he was hit by the train.
“It was just a freaky moment where something got out of control,” said Warren Coulter, who had been friends for 15 years with Plitt, who went by “Greg.”
Plitt, among the more recognisable faces and physiques in the fitness industry, was shooting a video for his website with two crew members when he was hit by the train.
Coulter said Plitt was a West Point graduate and Army Ranger who had jumped out of planes more than 1,000 times in his life and had a taste for the extreme but also treated everyone and everything with respect and care as befitted his military past.
Plitt, a native of Baltimore who settled in Los Angeles more than ten years ago, appeared on more than 200 magazine covers, Bravo’s reality television shows Work Out and Friends to Lovers, and NBC’s daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives, according to his personal website.
A motivational video on the website shows Plitt working out on the tracks as a Metrolink train passes by, and a workout video shows him straddling train tracks in push-up position with an arm on either rail.
“Anything that deals with trains is serious,” Kendrick said. “You’ve got to stay away from those tracks.”
