copyright 2009, The Washington Post WASHINGTON -- On a Wednesday morning in August, Sangjin Lee, an immigrant from South Korea, left his $8-an-hour job as a bakery deliveryman, went through the turnstile at the West Falls Church, Va., Metro station and headed to the eastbound platform. He told his co-workers at Vie de France Yamazaki in Vienna that he had some things he needed to do. About 50 people waited with him for the train. Cortney Ratliff was on her way to work and sat on a bench nursing a bad cold. Katie Hansen, headed to see her fiance, sat down next to Ratliff and nodded off. A six-car train bound for New Carrollton, Md., entered the station. Suddenly, there was a loud thud on the tracks, followed by an awful scream. Lee, 46, had thrown himself onto the tracks in front of the approaching train. He was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m. Lee is one of eight men and women this year who have used Metro to end their lives, putting themselves in the path of trains in what transit officials say is the largest number of such deaths in recent years. It's a violent death and a public one, as victims take their private anguish into one of the most familiar places imaginable. Experts say some who kill themselves this way act impulsively; others plan it. Just 1 to 2 percent of the 33,300 people who take their lives in the United States every year choose a train by which to do it -- whether a subway, commuter or freight train -- according to the American Association of Suicidology. Like Lee, some chose to die on tracks near their home or work. Several displayed signs of or had received a diagnosis of a mental disorder, a common thread discovered by researchers conducting a landmark study of rail suicides for the federal government. Lee, his wife said, had grown up in an abusive family. 'It's fair to say that people who engage in such a violent and traumatic method of suicide are more disturbed psychiatrically,' said Lanny Berman, executive director of the suicide association, a prevention group in the third year of a five-year study into track suicides for the Federal Railroad Administration. 'Taking pills doesn't always produce death, whereas jumping in front of a subway car is almost always lethal.' Some give obvious warnings. This month, Josh Fueston, a strapping Army private first class from Bellingham, Wash., who was being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for injuries he suffered during a five-month tour in Iraq, told friends on his Facebook page that he was going to kill himself. He did not say when or how. 'Josh Fueston is going to be gone,' he wrote at 6:51 p.m. on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. 'Nothing has been like it was before Iraq and it never will be.' In a post earlier that day, he said he feared he would lose his job and rank because he had been caught drinking on duty a week earlier. He told friends that he had received bad news from Walter Reed: His injuries would prevent him from returning to combat. Two days later, he jumped in front of a train at the Gallery Place-Chinatown Station at 7:58 a.m. In December 2006, Edwin Rodriguez, 21, who had bipolar disorder, came home from his shift at a pizzeria and asked his mother for $2 to buy a soda. He left his apartment and walked to the Glenmont Station, where he stood on the mezzanine above the platform, leaned over the railing and vaulted to the track. He had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, his mother, Maria Rodriguez, said, but was off his medication when he died. A housekeeper who fled Nicaragua with Edwin 21 years ago, she said she could not afford his medication. 'I believe he lost his mind at that moment,' she said in Spanish. Researchers in the federal study are conducting psychological autopsies on 60 people who took their lives in 2006 and 2007, although none in the Metro system. They are interviewing relatives, friends and co-workers. 'We ask people, `What do you think is the reason it was that day and that time and why they chose this method of death?' ' lead researcher Karen Marshall said. 'Every single person who died in a transit system was in the care of a mental health professional at the time.' Staff writers James Hohmann and Manuel Roig-Franzia, special correspondent Ana Francisca Vega, and staff researchers Madonna Lebling and Meg Smith contributed to this report. 