Police probing whether 'game of chicken' caused 2 nighttime deaths on train tracks

Avi Mor, 20, and Aviv Sharabi, 19, left a bar in the Emek Hefer district in central Israel and walked to the train tracks.

By BEN HARTMAN
Police are investigating the possibility that a game of chicken played by a group of young men led two of them to their deaths when a train hit them near Emek Hefer early Friday morning.
Or Yehuda residents Avi Mor, 20, and Aviv Sharabi, 19, had left a bar in the Emek Hefer industrial district in central Israel about 3 on Friday morning and for reasons that are yet unclear, made their way by foot to nearby railroad tracks.
Mor and Sharabi began walking on the tracks when a northbound Beersheba- Haifa train hit them. Their friends called for help, and paramedics arrived to rule both men dead at the scene.
On Friday morning, Mor and Sharabi were buried in Yehud. Mor, who was serving in the navy, was buried in the cemetery’s military section.
The Traffic Police have opened an investigation into the accident, and among other possibilities, are probing whether the victims and their friends were intoxicated and took to the train tracks as some sort of dare.
Traffic Police said that all four men had been drinking, but they aren’t sure how intoxicated they were. They added that they still have the incident listed as a traffic accident and that they don’t suspect the train engineer of any wrong-doing.