On Monday, August 20th, 2012 at 11:54 p.m., a piece of rail snapped beneath an eighty-car train carrying 9,837 tons of coal as it passed over a bridge above Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland.
Just a moment before the accident, Elizabeth Nass and Rose Mayr, two nineteen-year-old friends spending one last night of summer together before heading back to college, sat on that same bridge, dangling their legs over the edge.
Just a moment after, the train cars tipped over on their bodies, crushing them beneath piles of coal.
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