Incident location, Long Island
What Happened
A Suffolk County jury found the Long Island Rail Road negligent in the January 22, 2013, death of Blanca Maldonado and her father, Jose Adolfo Reyes, at a Brentwood grade crossing — a verdict that culminated in a $2.9 million settlement for the family and vindicated what her husband, Luis Maldonado of Commack, had believed for over a decade, according to Newsday.
Blanca Maldonado, 45, had just picked up her 74-year-old father at the Brentwood LIRR station on the morning of January 22, 2013, and the two were traveling in a 2010 Nissan Maxima toward an appointment when their car was struck by an eastbound LIRR train at the 2nd Street grade crossing. The train was moving at approximately 74 miles per hour at the time of impact and was not carrying any passengers. The collision caused the vehicle to erupt in a fireball of such intensity that it took days for a Suffolk County medical examiner to identify the two victims using dental records, according to Newsday.
From the outset, MTA Police — which led the investigation and, like the LIRR, is a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — maintained that the safety gates at the 2nd Street crossing had properly lowered ahead of the passing train, and that Maldonado must have driven around them. The LIRR leaned heavily into that narrative: just months after the fatal crash, the railroad featured an image of the fiery collision in a public service advertisement, according to Newsday, characterizing the incident as the result of a “very bad decision” to drive around lowered safety gates. For Luis Maldonado, who was still mourning his wife alongside his children, having Blanca cast as the poster child for reckless driving was, in his words, “the worst thing.” “They said that they were trying to send a message to the public,” he said. “I never believed that. I always thought that the gates didn’t go down.”
The two-week trial in Riverhead pitted sharply conflicting evidence against each other. The LIRR relied on testimony from two eyewitnesses: the locomotive engineer aboard the train and a pedestrian who said she saw Maldonado’s car drive around the lowered gates. However, that same pedestrian also maintained that Jose Adolfo Reyes — not Blanca Maldonado — had been behind the wheel, a claim the family’s attorneys used to question her overall credibility. The family’s Garden City attorney, Christopher Dean, further argued that the train operator may not have had a reliable vantage point to assess whether the gates were down. The LIRR also pointed to data from an event recorder at the crossing, which they said confirmed the gates functioned as designed.
But the family’s attorneys uncovered what they described as a critical discrepancy. The event recorder at the 2nd Street crossing showed that the gates came down and then returned to their upright position just before 10:53 a.m. — nearly a full minute before a separate “black box” aboard the train documented it passing through the crossing. Dean characterized this as evidence of a grade crossing “activation failure,” which occurs when a train’s wheels pass over a trigger point some distance before an intersection but fail to send the electrical relay that activates the crossing’s safety mechanisms. Dean’s team also found an eyewitness the MTA Police had apparently overlooked entirely: a motorist driving directly behind Maldonado who had called 911 immediately after the crash. In that call, the witness reported that “the gates were up. No lights were on. The bells weren’t ringing. And they proceeded slowly.” According to the family’s attorneys, MTA Police never followed up with this witness and lost both the audio recording and the transcript of the 911 call. The Riverhead jury sided with the Maldonado family, delivering a negligence verdict against the LIRR on March 23, which then led to the $2.9 million settlement, as reported by Newsday.
Aaron Donovan, spokesperson for the MTA, declined to comment on the litigation but maintained in a statement that “retrieved data demonstrated the grade crossing was operating properly at the time of this incident.” Despite the verdict, Donovan reiterated that all 282 of the LIRR’s grade crossings “meet or exceed regulatory requirements and are regularly inspected to ensure they are safe and operate as intended.” LIRR president Rob Free echoed that position: “We go above and beyond. We make sure all of our crossings are safe,” he said. For Luis Maldonado, the jury’s finding was deeply personal. “All my kids were so happy,” he said. “They knew that she didn’t do what they say that she did.” He added: “It was a relief for all of us.”
Location & Road Context
The 2nd Street grade crossing in Brentwood sits within a dense residential and commercial corridor in central Suffolk County. Grade crossings in this area have historically posed risks due to the volume of both rail and road traffic: Long Island accounted for one-third of the 33 grade crossing incidents recorded statewide last year, according to Federal Railroad Administration data cited by Newsday. Eleven of those incidents occurred on Long Island — seven in Suffolk County and four in Nassau County — resulting in seven injuries and four deaths. In just the first three months of 2026 alone, the LIRR reported two additional grade crossing incidents, producing two injuries and one fatality. You can track ongoing accidents in Brentwood and road conditions across Long Island at LongIslandTraffic.com.
Investigation & Legal Proceedings
The investigation into the 2013 crash was led by MTA Police, whose initial findings supported the LIRR’s position that the safety gates had functioned correctly and that Blanca Maldonado had driven around them. The Maldonado family filed a civil lawsuit against the railroad, and after a two-week trial in Suffolk County’s Riverhead courthouse, a jury returned a negligence verdict against the LIRR on March 23. The railroad subsequently agreed to a $2.9 million settlement with the family, according to the family’s attorneys, as detailed by Newsday. A key element of the plaintiffs’ legal strategy centered on the MTA Police’s alleged failure to preserve a critical 911 call from an eyewitness who reported the gates were never activated — a witness attorneys say investigators never followed up with after the crash.
Broader Impact
Since the deaths of Blanca Maldonado and Jose Adolfo Reyes in 2013, the LIRR has introduced several safety upgrades across its grade crossing network, including front-facing cameras on trains and at crossings, vertical flexible “delineators” designed to prevent vehicles from accidentally turning onto tracks, and an integration with Waze — the Google-owned navigation app — that delivers safety alerts about LIRR crossings and rights of way directly to GPS users. Despite those measures, Luis Maldonado told Newsday he now avoids both riding the LIRR and driving through its crossings — not only out of safety concerns, but because of the lasting resentment he carries over the railroad’s years-long effort to blame his wife for a crash a jury ultimately found was the railroad’s fault. Drivers and commuters concerned about grade crossing safety on Long Island can review current road conditions and incidents at LongIslandTraffic.com.