3 hospitalized after freak SEPTA accident in S. Phila.

LAUREN FERRETT, a recent arrival to Philadelphia, has grown accustomed to seeing drivers make U-turns right in front of her.

But when the Bella Vista resident drove south on Columbus Boulevard about 6:05 last night, she could not believe her eyes.

A SEPTA bus made a left turn at Dickinson Street, but continued into a U-turn and ended on the train tracks that run down the middle of the boulevard - directly in front of an idle freight train.

"I realized [the driver] wasn't making a U-turn onto the road but onto the train tracks, and the driver got stuck there," she said. "That's when I went, 'Oh, man, that's not good. Something's wrong.' "

Indeed, something was amiss, and SEPTA officials are trying to find out why and how the Route 29 bus ended up sideways in front of the train.

"We don't know how the bus ended up in that position. All we know is that the train was stopped and blocked the intersection to Tasker Street," spokeswoman Heather Redfern said.

The bus normally makes a left onto Tasker, but because the train blocked the entrance to the street, the driver drove up to Dickinson to make a left, Redfern said.

Two passengers and the bus driver - the only people on the bus - were treated for injuries, she said. Two were sent to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but it was unclear where the third person was taken, she said.

SEPTA investigators were reviewing video and conducting interviews, she said.

Ferrett, an associate director of athletic communications for Temple University, snapped a photo and kept driving past the bus and train until she could make a U-turn to return to the scene.

By the time she circled back to see if everything was OK, "three guys in yellow vests [were] kind of attending to the scene," said Ferrett, adding that she surmised that they had been on the train. She took some more photos then.

She continued to drive to her original destination, the A.C. Moore on Columbus near Pier 70, which is where the 29 bus begins its route. Ferrett bought felt and T-shirt paint to design a question mark for a Mike Tyson costume that she intends to wear this weekend at Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia.