Scranton,PA : Local singer critically hurt in fatal crash on July, Friday 14th 2017
A former singer in a popular local ’80s cover band is in critical condition and another musician is dead after a tractor-trailer crash Friday on a Florida highway.
Janet Rains, 48, professionally known as Jane Train, was injured while traveling with the band Adrenaline Mob. A tractor-trailer struck the band’s RV, which had pulled over with a flat tire, on Interstate 75 in Micanopy, Florida, the Gainesville Sun newspaper reported. Rains identifies herself as Adrenaline Mob’s tour manager on her Facebook page.
David Zablidowsky, 38, of Brooklyn, New York, the bassist for Adrenaline Mob, was killed in the crash, according to a news release from the Florida Highway Patrol. Zablidowsky, also known as David Z, was a former bassist for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and performed multiple times in Wilkes-Barre.
Jason McCole, 41, of Wilkes-Barre, and Robert Dressler, 45, of Plains Twp., were also injured, according the Florida Highway Patrol release. The release identified McCole as the driver of the RV.
Adrenaline Mob was traveling from Biloxi, Mississippi, to St. Petersburg, Florida, where they were scheduled to perform Friday at the State Theatre Saint Petersburg, the Gainesville Sun reported. The RV was pulled over on the side of the interstate along with another vehicle traveling with it when the truck collided with both vehicles on the shoulder and the RV caught fire, Florida Highway Patrol reports.
Rains, who wears her in hair in long, red dreadlocks, sang in the popular Luzerne County-based band M80. She is originally from Queens, New York, and now lives in Pittston.
“There’s really not much you can say when something like this happens, other than just pray for her,” said Shawn Ebert of Wilkes-Barre. “She’s a person of faith, and I know of anybody, she can make it through this.”
Ebert has shared the stage with Rains at PrideFest, a festival organized by the NEPA Rainbow Alliance. Those moments and sharing dinners at Rains’ house showed her kindness, he said.
“She’s a person of faith,” he said. “If anything, I just know that Janet would want everyone to pray for her.”
Rains’ “remarkable courage and strength of character will pull her through this challenge,” wrote friend John Dawe on Facebook, “but your prayers and support wouldn’t hurt, either.”
Dawe met Rains through mutual friends, but came to work with her and with Dressler on shows he produced. He used a song Rains created called “Time to Shine” on his “NEPA It Gets Better” video series. The series was a public service announcement supporting LGBT youth.
Rains, he said, “is always doing something for somebody else. She’s always being helpful and supportive, and doing that with a smile.”
Before joining M80, Rains, who started performing at a young age, toured with Liz Phair, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan and the Dixie Chicks. She is certified in scuba diving and has gone on dives in Fiji, Honduras, Palau and on a World War II Japanese battleship. Rains is a world traveler who performed across the globe in Europe and Kosovo and for the military with M80 in Cuba, Greenland and Curacao.
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Local singer critically hurt in fatal crash