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(MENDON, Mo.) — Four people were killed and dozens were injured Monday when an Amtrak train derailed after hitting a dump truck that was in an uncontrolled public crossing in Mendon, Missouri, according to Amtrak and officials.

Eight passenger cars and two locomotives derailed at about 12:42 p.m. local time, Amtrak said.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Cpl. Justin Dunn initially said two of the train’s passengers were killed, along with someone who was in the dump truck.

On Tuesday, the highway patrol said a third train passenger died overnight, bringing the total number of deaths to four.

At least 150 people involved the crash were treated at 10 hospitals in the area for minor to serious injuries, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement, citing updated information from Amtrak and law enforcement.

NTSB investigators said Tuesday that the dump truck was transporting aggregate to contractors nearby for an Army Corps of Engineers project. The NTSB said the vehicle was crossing the track when the backside was hit by the train.

The agency said it was downloading the event recorders from the train and noted the train had two forward-facing cameras. The dump truck also had a data recorder that investigators are trying to examine, according to the NTSB.

“It was something that you never think is going to happen, but when it does happen, it’s far worse than anything you could have imagined,” Jason Drinkard, a passenger on the train, told ABC affiliate station KMBC in Kansas City, Missouri.

Drinkard, a high school teacher, said he was traveling with his wife and six students to Chicago for a conference, when the crash occurred. He described seeing the “carnage,” with injured passengers and crew unable to walk.

The train was en route from Los Angeles to Chicago with 275 passengers and 12 crew members on board at the time of the crash, Amtrak said. All the train occupants from the scene were evacuated, according to Dunn.

Officials at Hendrick Medical Center accepted seven patients from the scene, while officials at MU Health Care University Hospital/Columbia said its facility was treating 16 patients as of 10 p.m. ET Monday. Pershing Memorial Hospital received between 15 and 20 people from the accident.

Passenger Rob Nightingale, 58, told ABC News his train car tipped to the side and he climbed through a window to escape. He said he saw a little girl crying and her family trying to comfort her.

Some people were covered in blood, he added.

Aboard the train were two Boy Scout troops from Appleton, Wisconsin, that sprang into action, breaking windows and helping to evacuate passengers, two of the scouts’ mothers told ABC affiliate station WBAY in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Berken and Tierney said they both described a nerve-racking period of time between learning of the crash and hearing that their sons survived the crash without injuries.

“Until I heard from my son an hour later, that he was OK, I couldn’t stop shaking or crying,” Berken said.

Tierney added, “It was a phone call that no parent should ever have to receive. It was probably way up there on the scariest moments of my life.”

Scott Armstrong, a spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America, told ABC News Tuesday that there were 16 scouts, ages 14 to 17, and eight adult chaperones who were returning home from a week-long backpacking trip at a wilderness camp in New Mexico. He said three of the adult chaperones suffered non-life-threatening injuries and remained in the hospital in stable condition.

Armstrong said one of the scouts was treated at a hospital for minor injuries and released.

“Our scouts immediately sprung into action and assisted other people in getting out of the train wreckage,” Armstrong said. “The train itself is physically on its side, which can be very traumatic and disorienting, and (the scouts) helped a lot of people with basic first aid and made sure they got the proper medical attention once it arrived on scene.”

He said most of the scouts on the trip had achieved their first aid merit badge and some had been awarded their emergency preparedness merit badge.

“Frankly, we know what these kids are capable of,” Armstrong said. “I’ve always described that scouting takes ordinary kids and enables them to do extraordinary things and that was on full display yesterday.”

Armstrong said one of the scouts, a 15-year-old he described as a troop senior patrol leader, went to the front of the train and discovered the driver of the dump truck that was hit, who had been ejected from his vehicle and landed in field adjacent to the toppled train. He said the scout attempted first aid on the dump truck driver and summoned state police and emergency responders, who continued to try to save the man’s life.

“They continued to give aid and then wound up just giving comfort, frankly, as he passed away on the scene, unfortunately,” Armstrong said.

He said the scouts will be monitored in the coming weeks to ensure they are both mentally and physically OK.

“It’s a pretty traumatic experience,” Armstrong said. “It’s not always evident immediately after any incident like this and so we have mental health professionals that we’re in consultation with to make sure that those services are available to the scouts and the leaders as necessary.”

Missouri Public Safety officials, highway patrol troopers and other personnel were dispatched to the scene, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson tweeted.

Mendon is about 100 miles northeast of Kansas City, Missouri.

The NTSB also said there are 130,000 passive crossings in America right now, which account for about half of all crossings. The agency said it has made recommendations for years about transforming and improving “passive” crossings.

It would’ve cost $400,000 to add cross arms, lights, and bells to the Mendon crossing, according to the NTSB.

The crash came a day after an Amtrak train collided with a car in California, killing three people.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement, “My thoughts are with the victims and families affected by today’s Missouri train derailment and the Northern California collision that occurred over the weekend. I have been updated on these crashes and my team is in communication with Amtrak and the relevant authorities.”

Federal Railroad Administration personnel are en route to Mendon, where they will support NTSB investigators, Buttigieg added.

ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Gio Benitez and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.

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(PENSACOLA, Fla.) — A 45-year-old man was arrested after his 8-year-old son found his loaded gun in a Florida motel room, fatally shot a 1-year-old girl and wounded her 2-year-old sister, authorities said.

The shooting unfolded Saturday night in Pensacola and investigators alleged the father attempted to cover up the incident by removing the gun and suspected drugs from the room before sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene.

The boy’s father, Roderick Dwayne Randall, was arrested on charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, tampering with evidence, culpable negligence and failure to safely store a firearm.

The baby girl who was killed and her sister are the daughters of Randall’s girlfriend, who was asleep in the motel room when the shooting occurred, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said at a news conference on Monday.

“Roderick leaves the hotel, but leaves his firearm in a closet [in] apparently what he thought was a safe holster,” Simmons said.

Simmons said Randall’s son knew where his father had hidden the gun.

“He pulls the gun from the holster, starts playing with it and fires a round into the 1-year-old toddler, ultimately killing the 1-year-old,” Simmons said.

He said the bullet went through the toddler and hit her sister. A third child in the room, the twin of the injured girl, was not injured, Simmons said.

Simmons said Randall returned the room following the shooting. He alleged that Randall removed the gun and a bag of suspected drugs from the room before returning.

“This is not how we treat our children,” Simmons said. “Our hearts go out to the rest of the families. This is ridiculous.”

Simmons said Randall has a 129-page criminal history that includes 14 previous felony convictions.

He was booked at the Escambia County Jail on $41,000 bond.

Relatives of the dead girl identified her as Kacey Bass.

Kacey’s mother was not charged in the episode.

At the same news conference, Simmons detailed an unrelated case of another parent arrested over the weekend on child neglect charges. He announced the arrest of a 27-year-old woman he alleged left her 1-year-old son in a hot car with the windows rolled up while she went to a bar.

Madison Haley Hart was jailed on $15,000 bond on a charge of child neglect with great bodily harm, according to online jail records.

Simmons alleged that Hart was apparently intoxicated when she showed up at the Ticket Sports Bar on Saturday night and stayed for about 20 minutes. He said bar employees stopped Hart from leaving due to her impaired condition and called the sheriff’s office.

Simmons said deputies exercised the Myers Act, which allows law enforcement officers to detain people for involuntary detox or alcohol treatment if they appear to be a danger to themselves or others. After deputies took Hart to a medical facility, a relative of the woman contacted authorities and informed them Hart should have been with her 1-year-old child and gave them a description of Hart’s car, Simmons said.

Simmons alleged that Hart denied driving to the bar and never mentioned her child was in a car outside the establishment.

He said that deputies went back to the bar and found the toddler locked inside a car with the windows rolled up. By the time deputies discovered the child, the boy had been in the car for more than an hour, Simmons said.

“We actually have to break the windows out to save this child, who was suffering from heat-related illness,” said Simmons, adding that Hart’s son was treated at a hospital and turned over to the custody of a child protective team. “You can imagine the shock of the employees and of the deputies when we find out that there was a 1-year-old left in a car in this type of heat.”

Simmons used the examples of Randall and Hart to “encourage parents to do better.”

“Ms. Hart and Mr. Randall will have their day in court,” Simmons said.

It was not clear if Hart or Randall had retained or were appointed defense attorneys.

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(MISHAWAKA, Ind.) — A young Indiana corrections officer who hoped to become a police officer has been killed in a drive-by shooting, authorities said.

St. Joseph County correctional officer Rhema Harris was killed around 6 p.m. Sunday “in yet another senseless act of violence,” St. Joseph County Sheriff William Redman said.

Harris, 28, was inside her home in Mishawaka, which is just outside of South Bend, when one bullet struck her in the chest, Mishawaka police’s detective bureau division chief Dan Gebo told ABC News.

The shooter then sped away and has not been identified, Gebo said.

The shooting was believed to be a retaliation in a feud, Gebo said, stressing that the corrections officer was not the target and she was just “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Several people were in the house with Harris, including minors, Gebo said.

Authorities have talked to several witnesses and persons of interest, Gebo said.

Harris was hired as a St. Joseph County correctional officer in July 2021 and was assigned to the midnight shift at the jail, Redman said.

“Rhema proudly served her country in the United States Army,” Redman said. “She received a national defense service award, global war on terrorism service medal and an Army service ribbon, before being honorably discharged in 2016.”

She hoped to become a St. Joseph County police officer, Redman said.

This drive-by shooting comes amid a concerning rise in gun violence. The U.S. lost 20,923 people to gun violence-related incidents last year, excluding suicides. Last year marked a big increase from 2020, when 19,515 died from gun violence, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

There are 200 million to 350 million guns in the U.S., according to estimates for this year from the World Population Review.

ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.

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(SAN DIEGO, Calif.) — Residents in the San Diego area took to social media after mysterious lights were spotted in the sky just off the coast Monday night.

With no clear indication of what the lights could be, dozens began posting photos and videos on Twitter, questioning what was happening in their night sky.

The posts offered several possible sources for the unusual lights, including UFOs or drones from the Imperial Beach Police Department, which is planning a drone light show for the Fourth of July.

However, the IBPD did not claim the lights as their own.

The San Diego Police Department told ABC News on Tuesday morning that the mysterious lights were actually flares being used for military exercises.

While nearby Naval Air Station North Island and Camp Pendleton both said that they did not know what the lights were, the SDPD said that the lights had been confirmed to them by military officials as being used for exercises.

Gabe Gunlock, a Mission Hills resident, took to Twitter with a video of the lights.

Gunlock told ABC News that he did a double take around 9 p.m. on Monday night, noticing strange, bright lights far off the coast.

He explained that he lives right near the airport in the area, so there are always planes and lights near his home.

However, he said there was something different about the lights he saw off of the coast.

At 9:55 p.m., Gunlock tweeted, “Multiple floating lights over the ocean. Very still, very bright. Orange, reddish light. Patterns of 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6,” alongside a video of distant blinking lights.

Gunlock said that his Twitter post quickly gained views, with other San Diego locals acknowledging the lights and wondering what they were.

“It was a super crazy night, super fun to connect with San Diego,” Gunlock told ABC News.

Gunlock added that his post now has over 100,000 impressions on Twitter.

“All I wanted to know is, ‘what’s going on,’” he said. “It had to be miles and miles off of the coast, it was burning extremely bright.”

When Gunlock heard that the lights were from military exercises, he said that it made sense that they weren’t from the airport, especially because they were so strikingly bright.

San Diego is home to several military bases, with more than 100,000 active duty service members in the area.

Over 15,000 active duty service members transition out of active duty service in San Diego each year. According to Thomas Jefferson School of Law, over half of those transitioning out of active duty decide to stay in San Diego, where there is a deep community of over 240,000 veterans.

San Diego, home to 60% of the ships in the fleet of the U.S. Navy and one third of all active duty service members in the U.S. Marine Corps, could have more mysterious lights in the sky for its civilian neighbors in the future.

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