Grace Bentkowski’s family members are remembering the 22-year-old journalist — and pushing to increase safety standards at a Chicago-area station after she was hit and killed by a train last month.
“It still hasn’t sunk in,” uncle Michael O’Neill told The Chicago Sun-Times of her death.
Grace, who had just started working as a creative producer for NewsNation in May, was commuting home to Dyer, Ind., from downtown Chicago on Thursday, July 25, according to the newspaper and WGN-TV.
After exiting a train at the Hegewisch South Shore station, she followed other passengers across train tracks to access the parking lot, which was when she was struck and killed by another train.
Grace was rushed to the University of Chicago Medical Center and her parents and brother were present when she was later pronounced dead due to her injuries.
“My mom and dad burst into tears and screaming while I sat there, stone-faced, thinking, ‘This isn’t real. How is this even possible?’ ” her brother Adian told NBC affiliate WTHR.
According to WGN-TV, her family said that they could not hear the train’s horn in footage they viewed of the incident.
“No noise, no nothing,” her father, Phil Bentkowski, told the outlet. “From the video all you hear is a thud. Then the engineer blows a horn,”
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Before his daughter’s death, Grace’s father said he “was under the assumption that if you were hit by a train leaving the station” that the “worst case was maybe a broken leg.”
Her uncle told the Chicago Sun-Times that the family believes “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.”
Now, they will “keep fighting so that this doesn’t happen to someone else.”
“It’s what Grace would want out of this,” her uncle added. “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.”
A representative with the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, which operates the South Shore Line, told WGN-TV in a statement that “safety is our #1 priority in everything we do.”
“Our deepest condolences have been and continue to be with the family and friends of our rider who lost her life at the Hegewisch Station,” the statement continued. “We firmly believe that the station, as designed in 2006, is safe. We would never operate the railroad with a condition that we believed to be unsafe.”
“One accident is, however, too many,” the statement continued. “After any accident, we look to see if safety can be further enhanced, and this situation is no different. We are reaching out to an engineering firm to determine what it will take to add active warning to the pedestrian crossings. In the interim, we are installing warning signage, and, although not required by law, the South Shore Line will institute a train whistle board to sound as trains approach the crossings.”
They did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
A GoFundMe organized by Grace’s brother has now raised over $29,000 and served as a way for the family to celebrate the young journalist’s “life and legacy.”
“Grace touched many people’s lives at the young age of 22. She was a striving journalist and the hardest worker there is,” her brother wrote in a message. “She managed to make such a big impact at 22 years old, and I wish we could’ve had her here longer.”
“Although we lost such a beautiful and caring soul, she is now with all of us,” her brother added. “Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we go down this road together.”
