Plainfield - Rick Cima's death on Friday morning seemed inexplicable.

The 18-year-old Cima lived so close to the train tracks that he could almost see them from his house on Laperle Avenue. Neighbors describe a young man who constantly rode his dirt bike and four-wheeler around the neighborhood and surrounding fields.

Cima was killed when the pickup truck he was driving was struck by a train at the Lillibridge Road crossing, just down the street from his house.

The truck was hit at 7:52 a.m., Police Chief Robert Hoffman said, and dragged about 100 yards south on the tracks. Cima was its only occupant.

Scott Conti, a spokesman for Providence and Worcester Railroad Co., said the company is working with state police to investigate the accident. He said there are warning devices at the Lillibridge Road crossing, which is a grade crossing, and part of the investigation will include whether the devices were working properly.

The crossing does not have bars that lower when a train approaches but does have a system of flashing lights.

Conti said the train consisted of three engines and had just left the Plainfield train yard, heading south to start its morning schedule. There were no freight cars attached. He said the train runs the route from Plainfield to New Haven and back five days a week. The engines were scheduled to stop in Old Saybrook and pick up freight cars and then stop in Clinton to pick up cargo.

Conti said he did not know the train's speed at the time of the collision.

"Our sympathies go out to the family," he said.

Plainfield police said the three crew members were not injured.

Mourning a loss

Neighbors and friends described Cima as a fun-loving guy who loved riding dirt bikes and skateboarding. Cima cruised the neighborhood on his four-wheeler or in the truck, they said, and often headed out to the cornfields nearby or one street over to his buddy's backyard homemade dirt bike track.

"He loved to eat," said a man who cracked a brief grin and was identified only as the father of Cima's best friend, D.J., who was too distraught to speak on Friday.

Cima was a 2009 graduate of Ellis Technical High School in Danielson, according to friends. He was on his way to a job in Jewett City at the time of the collision, driving a pickup truck given to him by his grandfather.

Cima lived with his parents and sister at 13 Laperle Ave. About a dozen cars were in the driveway of the Cima house by late morning on Friday, and a man who came to the door said the family had no comment.

Across the street from Lillibridge Road, at Hank's Dari Bar on Route 12, Courtney Lefevre sobbed and Dane Wilde wondered how he would make it through the work day. Cima is a past employee of Hank's and Lefevre and Wilde each said they had known him for years.

"He was really fun; he just liked to do anything," Lefevre said.

Wilde said he babysat Cima and his sister. Wilde and Lefevre remembered Cima as the young kid who started out cleaning up around the Dari Bar and, when he got a little older, worked as a cook.

Cima had recently gotten a new job in Jewett City, they said, but they'd still see him around, particularly on a scooter, skateboard or dirt bike.

Cima studied carpentry in high school, they said.

"He was good," Wilde said, "one of the top in his class."

Questions about crossing

Even as the death of someone so familiar with the intersection seemed hard to explain, locals also described a kind of complacency for the intersection, where trains come through infrequently and many drivers barely glance around before crossing.

"No one ever stops there," said a woman walking through the parking lot of Happy Jack's Sports Bar at the corner of Route 12 and Lillibridge Road. She and a man she was walking with said they work at the sports bar and live in the area, and both said the trains run so infrequently that residents hardly think about them.

Another man driving through on his Harley-Davidson, who did not want to be named, said he's had a few close calls over the years on similar intersections not far from the Lillibridge crossing. He's looked up, the man said, to see a train nearly upon him.

There are no gates, but the crossing does have flashing lights and bells, residents said, and the oncoming train blows its whistle well ahead of its approach.

But residents also said the warning bells at the crossing are not very loud - one man said he had never heard them - and that the morning sun shines directly into drivers' eyes.

Tarny DuBois lives on Lillibridge, up the road from the crossing, close enough that she can see the train if she walks out of her driveway and up to the hilltop several houses away.

DuBois at first said there are only flashing lights, then added that the crossing includes a "ding-ding-ding" sound like the one when a gate is being lowered.

"It's not loud at all," she said. "Like you can see the tracks from here, but (not hear) dinging."

DuBois heard the train whistle Friday morning, same as every morning. She remembered turning the television up so her 3-year-old, who she said is "obsessed" with the train, wouldn't hear it.

Not long after 8 a.m., DuBois said, she walked up the road after hearing the commotion of the ambulance, police and firetrucks.

Down at the crossing, she said, she spotted Cima's father, mother and sister. They were sitting on the tracks, holding each other.

Day staff member Elissa Bass contributed to the story.

k.crompton@theday.com