March 13, 2012 - 19:18 AMT
EBay executive killed on train tracks

An eBay executive was struck and killed by a commuter train in California, Mashable reported.

Eric Salvatierra, 39, who served as vice president of customer advocacy and operational excellence at eBay unit PayPal, was hit by a Caltrain commuter train in Menlo Park, Calif., near San Francisco at around 9:30 a.m. Authorities are investigating the incident. Caltrain did not provide any details. Salvatierra’s uncle, Oscar Salvatierra, told The Mercury News, “all I know is [Eric Salvatierra] had his bike.”

A PayPal spokesman told The Wall Street Journal, “The eBay family will miss Eric very much. Our thoughts are with his family and all that knew him at this difficult time.”

Salvatierra, who was married and the father of three young girls, was also the former chief financial officer for Skype, now a unit of Microsoft, according to his LinkedIn profile. Salvatierra graduated from Georgetown University in 1994 with a degree in finance and worked as a securities analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co., for four years after college.

So far, there have been four people killed on Caltrain tracks in 2012, according to The Mercury News. In 2011, there were 16 deaths on the railroad’s lines.