A young journalist from Indiana was struck dead by a train on her commute home from work. 

Grace Bentkowski, 22, was headed home to Dyer from her job as a creative producer at NewsNation in Chicago. The family is blaming the July 25 tragedy on poor safety at Hegewisch station on the South Shore line.

Journalist killed by train

Patrons at the Hegewisch station have to cross the tracks to reach the parking lot. But Bentkowski's view was obstructed by a concrete pillar and the train conductor didn't give a warning, her family said.

“No noise, no nothing. From the video all you hear is a thud,” her father Phil Bentkowski said. “Then the engineer blows a horn.”

Bentkowski thought that somebody stole his daughter's phone when he noticed a GPS blip moving back toward the city. Then, the GPS dot started speeding toward the University of Chicago Medical Center at over 70 miles an hour.

The family rushed to the hospital, where doctors said Grace was alive. After hours of surgery, the family was told she was dead.

“My initial thought was ‘that’s not possible,'” her father said. “Was under the assumption that if you were hit by a train leaving the station, obviously it wouldn’t be that fast and worst case was maybe a broken leg. It’s the worst nightmare ever.”

"Beautiful inside and out"

Her father says she was not using her phone or using her AirPods when the train hit.

“It’s such a safety issue, this is 2024,” Bentkowski said. “I don’t understand why there isn’t ‘stop, look, listen’ safety signs — it makes no sense. She was thrown 50 feet.”

Bentkowski was just months into her job at NewsNation after graduating from Ball State University.

“She was beautiful inside and out,” grandmother Maryann O’Neill said. “She knew what she wanted to do in life and it was the news."

The Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the South Shore Line, said they have added temporary signage while they look into installing an active warning system. They urged patrons to "adhere to the simple message of ‘See Tracks, Think Train.'”

"We firmly believe that the station, as designed in 2006, is safe. We would never operate the railroad with a condition that we believed to be unsafe," a statement said.