Glen Merryman

Said the following about :

“Paul Craven, Andrew Field, Syuart McMillan, Jeremy Rogers, Adrian Bentley, Phil Lindsell, James Smedley, Darren Hamilton, Zoe Vale, Stephan Bialoszwwski, Dillon Serle.

We would like to nominate them for their dedication, commitment and professionalism displayed during the unfortunate fatality of a member of public at Purley in April. During to training event taking place, both Brighton and Purley RNOs were present at station when the incident occurred and it was no more than a few minutes old when the officers deployed out to assist. Staff members from Brighton were excellent as they did not have their usual uniform due to it bring a training day. They all immediately organised themselves and went to assist the station staff and members of British Transport Police whilst wearing random Hi Vis jackets found in a cupboard.

Some helped close the station at the front and rear entrances, directing passengers to alternative methods of transport, and others remained on the platform to aid the police and ambulance staff attending to the victim. Everyone worked together extremely well, particularly with communications, bearing in mind that Brighton had no Airway radios. This meant Purley were relaying messages to them in order for everyone to assist staff and passengers in the best way possible.

A number of the RNOs also assisted BTP with cleaning the area and had the sad task of assisting to locate missing items.

All RNOS aided with the de train of the service which was involved in the incident as it had stopped further up the track after striking the victim. The train was reversed back down once the clean-up had taken place and standby service arrived to take people on to East Croydon for an interchange.

These passengers had been stranded aboard the service for a number of hours and so RNOs issued water and directed passengers onto the other train for them to continue their journey, as well as providing details of any interchange required. Despite what the RNOs just had to deal with, each of them helped passengers with the utmost patience and courtesy. This was an extremely graphic incident, yet none of the team were in any doubt about what they had to do in order for a service to be resumed as quickly and safely as possible for customers looking to travel.“