WASHINGTON -- A "confused" French woman tried to cross over Metrorail's Red Line tracks at Metro Center before transit personnel shut off electricity to the third rail and halted train traffic through the busy station on Wednesday night.
Numerous accounts of what happened indicate that the track crossing was a simple mistake by a visitor from France who did not speak English.
"I don't think she understood the risk she put herself in," Metro spokesman Dan Stessel told WTOP-FM. "She clearly doesn't understand how Metro operates."
Red Line users are supposed to access the opposite platform by either using the upper-level faregate mezzanines at 13th or 11th streets NW or by using the lower-level Orange and Blue line platform.
Washington City Paper -- which noted "Who hasn't taken the wrong escalator at Metro Center or Chinatown, ended up across from where you wanted to be, and wanted to just walk over the tracks to the other side?" -- reports that the unidentified woman, who was taken into custody, won't be charged.
Track jumping can be a big stunt. In June, video surfaced in Brooklyn of a pair of track jumpers leaping from one platform to another in an empty station -- this week's Metro Center incident happened in front of hundreds of people.
New York transit blog Second Avenue Sagas described the stunt at the 9th Avenue in Brooklyn as being "beyond dumb." Read more about the stunt here or watch it below.