A Metro tunnel.

Flickr / Ryan Stavely

The family of a 78-year-old woman struck by a Metro train is suing the transit agency for $10 million.

The lawsuit was brought by the surviving children of Senella Dancy, a woman who was killed by a Metro train at the Fort Totten station in March 2019 after wandering around the station confused for more than two and a half hours. She had never ridden a subway train before, according to the lawsuit.

The Washington Post first reported the news.

The complaint claims that Dancy was not helped by the station manager or other Metro employees, despite it being “abundantly clear that the Plaintiff’s Decedent was confused.” Dancy was “old, fragile, with brain atrophy and with senile changes,” but Metro employees at the station and in the Rail Operations Control Center neglected to block the gates and doors leading to the tracks and failed to see on the surveillance video that Dancy had wandered on the tracks, the lawsuit argues. It alleges wrongful death.

A spokesperson for WMATA declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court on Monday, was recently moved from D.C. Superior Court to U.S. District Court.

Dancy isn’t the only person struck and killed by Metro trains in recent years, nor the first such tragedy to result in a lawsuit. In 2019, the family of a man who was fatally struck by a Metro train at the Virginia Square station sued the transit authority for $25 million.

This story was updated to include a statement from Metro.