Rail staff 'had to stop onlookers taking photos' of dead pair after Ealing Broadway train tragedy

Eyewitness tells how some people leaned over police cordon to take pictures of suspected double suicide at west London station

Woman and 16-year-old killed by a speeding train at Ealing Broadway station (Ellie Jones (Twitter))

Staff at Ealing Broadway station had to prevent people from taking photographs of the dead bodies of a mother and daughter killed after they fell onto the tracks in front of a speeding train, according to an eyewitness.

Lotti Strongman, 26, a PR executive who arrived at the station shortly after the pair fell to their deaths, described "people leaning over the cordon trying to take pictures".

She said that the majority of those taking photographs were young men, and that most people at the scene were shocked by the incident.

"I went into a waiting room and that's when someone told me that a station announcement had told people to stop taking photographs of the scene," she said.

The 36-year-old woman and her 16-year-old daughter fell onto the tracks at Ealing Broadway at around 6pm on Tuesday evening, just as a train from Cardiff to London Paddington raced through the station.

Their deaths are not being treated as suspicious, British Transport Police said.

Some reports have described the pair's deaths as a suspected double suicide.

Chris Newport, a railway chaplain who was at Ealing Broadway station to help staff and commuters recover following the incident, said that railway staff had done their best "to help everyone and get people home".

Commenting on claims that people were taking photographs of the scene over the police cordon he said that people "often take photos when it's not appropriate".

(Additional reporting by agencies)