Teen Killed Playing ‘Chicken’ With Train

A Meridian teen-ager is dead after being struck by a train south of Boise.

Robert “Bobby” Strasser, 18, was playing chicken with a friend on a trestle at the Owyhee Railroad Crossing just before midnight Friday when he was struck by the eastbound train, the Ada County Sheriff’s Department said. The other youth jumped out of the way in time, but Strasser did not make it. The accident was witnessed by several of Strasser’s friends.

Rushed by car to St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise, he was pronounced dead there. Law enforcement officials are still investigating.

At least four Treasure Valley pedestrians have been struck and killed by trains in the past eighteen months.

Friends said they had played chicken with Strasser in the past.

“His friends called it an adrenaline rush - that’s what it was all about. It hasn’t got my adrenaline going at all,” Bobby’s father, Robert Strasser Sr., said.

Strasser says his son had retinosis pigmentosa - a hereditary, degenerative eye disease.

“It’s tough being the guy that doesn’t quite measure up to the rest of them. You have to be a little tougher, a little braver, a little stronger, and (have) no fear,” Strasser said.