A 20-year-old woman was dragged 200 metres and killed by a freight train after she dropped an object, possibly her phone, on the tracks and turned around to pick it up.

Salima El Montassir was hit by the Bari-Milan freight train at the railway station in Civitanova Marche, in the Province of Macerata in the Italian region Marche, while on her way to work, on the morning of Wednesday, 10th May, at around 5am.

Salima, whose family are from Morocco, was crossing the tracks with an unnamed male friend when she reportedly dropped an object, possibly her phone, and turned around to pick it up.

Italian media reports that she did not hear the train coming because she had her earphones on and she was hit by the locomotive. Her body was then dragged some 200 metres (650 feet) down the tracks.

The Italian authorities questioned the man Salima was with, who has not been named, as a witness and ruled out suicide.

Teresa Periti, the head of the Russell linguistics school that Salima had attended in her hometown of Cles, said: “She was a girl whose talents I had been able to appreciate personally, she was very capable, enthusiastic, she wanted to find her own way and for this she was also willing to travel.

“The news of her death shocked us, in the afternoon at the teachers’ college we remembered her with emotion.”

Salima was buried at the cemetery in Cles, in the Trentino region of northern Italy, on Saturday, 13th May.

Her friend Sofia said: “She wanted to achieve independence and always wanted to do everything alone – she says – she didn’t ask anyone for help. She wanted to make a change in her life, a life in the valleys that for her, a lover of big cities, who dreamed of Milan, was too narrow.”

Salima leaves behind three brothers, Oussama, Manar and Reda, as well as her mother Fatna and father Abdelrazzak, according to local media.

The Italian authorities, led by deputy prosecutor Enrico Barbieri, are investigating the tragic incident and have obtained CCTV footage from the station.