UPDATE: Irvine Police say the mystery of the missing mother and daughter has been solved–and has created yet another mystery (see below) . . .
Irvine Police are dealing with a couple freaky conundrums.
]
First, what are the odds that the same man would be hit by the same train two weeks apart?
The unidentified 57-year-old Costa Mesa resident had his left hand severed by a Metrolink
train at the Laguna Niguel station two weeks ago.
Then, Tuesday morning, he was struck by the same train at the Irvine Transportation Center, sustaining injuries to his right hand and left arm that were not life-threatening.
Maybe we should amend the question to: What are the odds of getting hit
twice by a train and not sustaining life-threatening injuries?
As he did two weeks ago, the man told responding firefighters and police officers that he fell off the platform and landed on the tracks, where he was hit by the approaching train.
Sheriff's deputies who responded to the Feb. 8 incident say they talked with family members of the man who believed he had suffered an accident. But following this latest train smacking, Irvine Police will request a mental health examination, according to Lt. John Hare.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of a 26-year-old woman and her
5-year-old daughter is also perplexing Hare's department Police were called to a residence in
the 1300 block of Wycliffe in Irvine before 12:30 p.m. Tuesday about a possible parental abduction.
A man returned home from his night shift to discover his wife had moved out
overnight and taken their little girl with her.
Police believe the woman, who has family in Mexico, was spotted in San Clemente earlier in the day.
She was identified as Genny Shermantine and described as 26, 5 foot 4, 110 pounds, Hispanic with brown hair and
brown eyes.
The girl, Katherine
Shermantine, is 5, 3 foot 5, 45 pounds, Hispanic with brown
hair and brown eyes.
If you've seen them, contact Detective James Do at (949)
279-4701.
UPDATE: Irvine detectives today confirmed that Genny and Katherine Shermantine were located. They had checked into a women's shelter. Now detectives want to know what led the woman to leave her home.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.