Jeremiah Johnson and his mother, Lamira Samson, climb over a parked freight train on their way to school. She’d seen plenty of trains start without warning. An eighth grade girl waited 10 minutes before she made her move, nervously scrutinizing the gap between two cars. ProPublica and InvestigateTV witnessed dozens of students do the same in Hammond, climbing over, squeezing between and crawling under train cars with “Frozen” and “Space Jam” backpacks. Once up herself, she helped him scramble down the other side. Hearing none, she hurried to help Jeremiah climb a ladder onto the flat platform of a train car.
They could walk around the train, perhaps a mile out of the way she could keep her 8-year-old son home, as she sometimes does or they could try to climb over the train, risking severe injury or death, to reach Hess Elementary School four blocks away. Lamira Samson, Jeremiah’s mother, faced a choice she said she has to make several times a week. Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever.
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