WASHINGTON -- Saturday marks the 10 year anniversary of the deadliest metro crash in history. Systems failed and two trains collided, killing 9 people and injuring several others on June 22, 2009.
Family, friends, and city officials gathered at Legacy Memorial Park Saturday morning to honor those who were lost.
“A million times I’ve needed you. A million times I’ve cried. If love alone could have saved you, you never would have died," said the daughter of Veronica Dubose -- who was one of the nine people who died in the crash.
Tawanda Brown lost her daughter Lavonda King in the incident.
“I call this our 9/11. We had nine victims that lost their lives, and we had 11 children that were orphaned," said Brown. "Just God be with them, because if the changes are not being made, there is no excuse for another incident like this, none whatsoever. It should never happen again."
That's what Councilmember Vincent Gray (who was mayor at the time) and Mayor Muriel Bowser (who was serving as the Ward 4 councilmember in 2009) told families after the crash.
"We offered you prayers then, but we also made you a number of commitments to make sure that we would do all that we could to make sure that our transit authority was a safe way for everybody in our region and our visitors to travel," Bowser said.
“And that we never forget the sacrifices they made that day in order to be able to move our transit system forward here in the District of Columbia," Gray said.
Automatic train operation still has yet to return to Metro tracks. The focus, though, on this 10th anniversary is the victims and the children who had to grow up without them.