Victims of North Tonawanda train-pickup crash identified (2024)

The three people killed Friday night when their pickup was hit by a train were identified Monday by North Tonawanda police.

The three who died were David McMinn, 69, Olive Geldart, 66, and Ra’Mari Geldart, 6.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to assist with Ra’Mari’s funeral expenses.

“The family is in absolute shambles so please send prayers and any little money you can spare to help this little boy,” Danielle Lawler wrote on the GoFundMe page for Ra’Mari.

There’s also a GoFundMe page to raise funds for the funerals of McMinn and Olive Geldart, who were identified as grandparents of the boy by The Daily Mail.

Fretthold Funeral Home in North Tonawanda held a private viewing Sunday for relatives of Olive and Ra’Mari, an official there confirmed.

Buffalo Public Schools issued a statement of condolence Monday over Ra’Mari’s death.

“Superintendent Williams and the entire district extend their deepest and most sincere condolences and prayers to the families and friends of the 6-year-old who tragically lost his young life due to a train accident over the weekend,” the district said in a statement. “As this loss of such a young life has shocked and saddened our entire learning community, but particularly BPS 90, where the child attended school, Superintendent Williams directed the Crisis Prevention and Response Teams to be onsite first thing this morning to lead a faculty meeting and to provide the staff with empathic direction for the day and to assist students experiencing loss, grief, fear, or trauma with a goal of helping them begin to heal.”

The accident happened when an Amtrak train hit the pickup that the three were traveling in at 7:56 p.m. Friday at the railroad crossing near the intersection of River Road and Felton Street.

Police were in the middle of conducting a traffic stop on Felton, just east of the railroad tracks, at the time the pickup was hit by an Amtrak train, North Tonawanda Police Chief Keith T. Glass said during a Sunday news conference.

The victims’ vehicle had turned onto Felton from River, Glass said.

Witnesses told The Buffalo News that a Dodge pickup got stuck between a pair of railroad gates meant to warn vehicular traffic of an approaching train.

North Tonawanda police have said the investigation is ongoing.

“It’s going to take some time to gather all the facts of exactly what took place last Friday night,” Glass said Sunday.

Friday’s incident was the second fatal crash involving a train and vehicle near River Road this year. Around 7 a.m. Jan. 16, a 29-year-old Wheatfield woman in a Hyundai Elantra was struck by an Amtrak train at River and Witmer roads in North Tonawanda and died hours later at ECMC. River’s intersection with Witmer is less than a mile from the Felton Street rail crossing.