At age 12, Grace Bentkowski knew she wanted to one day become a journalist and live in a big city.
Bentkowski, 22, was only months into her career as a creative producer at NewsNation and was days away from signing a lease for an apartment in downtown Chicago when she was struck and killed by a train on her commute home to Dyer, Indiana.
She had just stepped off a train July 25 at the Hegewisch South Shore station and was headed toward the parking lot, when she was struck by another train leaving the platform.
Bentkowski’s uncle and godfather, Michael O’Neill, said her parents knew something was wrong when they checked the GPS location on her phone and noticed it was headed toward the University of Chicago Medical Center.
“They hopped in their car and drove over there,” O’Neill said. “Once they were already there her dad got a call from a police officer telling them she had been hit and rushed into surgery. The doctors said her injuries were severe and she suffered a lot of internal injuries and didn’t make it.”
O’Neill said he and Bentkowski’s father were shown the video of the incident and were shocked to find that the train that struck her hadn’t sounded its whistle until after the train had started moving.
“I watched the video, and the conductor didn’t blow the horn until he noticed her in front of him,” O’Neill said. “By then it was too late. Our biggest complaint and concern for everybody is that this would have never happened to Grace if there had been some kind of light or alert that signaled that a train was going to go over the pedestrian crossover.”
Bentkowski graduated from Ball State University in May and had started working at NewsNation. O’Neill said she was a hard worker and had completed several internships before graduating.
“She was excited about moving to Chicago, being close to her family, being in a big city and working at a national news station,” O’Neill said. “She never grew very tall, so we would always joke with her that she’d have to stack books under her seat when she sat at the anchor desk. She was a ball of energy and just loved being a part of what was happening in the world.
“She was really something.”
O’Neill said the family is concerned with the lack of communication from the South Shore Line. They have hired lawyers to look into what happened.
“It still hasn’t sunk in,” he said. “We’re going to keep fighting so that this doesn’t happen to someone else. It’s what Grace would want out of this. We’re doing it for her. We’re broken because of this, and we’ll never get over it, but we have to figure out how to live with it.”
The South Shore Line could no be reached for comment.
In a statement sent to WGN9, the South Shore Line said it would be adding interim warning signs while “reaching out to an engineering firm to determine what it will take to add active warning to the pedestrian crossings.”
The family has established a GoFundMe to help with expenses.