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Suspected drunk driver's car struck by train

TENINO, Wash. — A woman says she's grateful to be alive after a suspected drunk driver nearly plowed into her.  He lost control and hit a train. Then another train stopped him in his tracks.

Incredibly no one was hurt.

It happened just after 10:30 Saturday night on State Route 507 near Tenino.

"All I could think of was he just missed me," said Kiera Moore of Olympia, 'barely missed my car. And then his car gets crushed."

Moore could hardly believe what she was seeing.  A speeding driver just 10 feet from hitting her, losing control on the highway between Tenino and Centralia.

"Hit the gravel and went straight into the train," she said. "Head on. Like in my rearview I saw the sparks of his car hit the train."

She and another driver quickly turned around.

By then, 41-year-old Michael Keith Goodwin had gotten out of his vehicle. She said he appeared to be intoxicated. She called for help.

"I was on the phone with 911," said Moore, "and I just, I screamed. I was like 'it just hit his car.'"

They watched in horror as a train rumbled down the track and smacked right into his car. A picture shows the damage.  His car, a compact, was a tangle of metal trapped under the wheels of the train.

"I think it should be a lesson for a lot of people about not drinking and driving," said Moore. "Because I mean he could have made it home in one piece.  His car is in a thousand (pieces). He is going to be in some type of trouble. And it's just unfortunate. That's not how life's supposed to be lived."

Moreover, he could have hit her. "Very close," she said.

All of it is leaving her unsettled.

"He was trying to walk and stumbling," she said, "and all the after effects of being drunk and getting in an accident."

Goodwin's rap sheet lists 16 traffic infractions going back 16 years, all of them in Thurston County.

He has likely been convicted of DUI in the past because according to the Thurston County Jail, he should have had an interlock device on his car.

He is being held without bail.

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