ANN ARBOR, Mich — A 20-year-old man is recovering after being run over by a freight train in Ann Arbor earlier this week.
The City of Ann Arbor Fire Department responded to the call around 9:37 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 26. Firefighters arrived at the railroad tracks between Miller Avenue and Huron Street and found a 20-year-old man with his left had entangled in the axle of the lead locomotive.
Authorities said that the man had been sleeping on the tracks when a northbound freight train ran him over. The train was traveling at a slow speed when it ran the man over and was able to stop shortly after striking him, the fire department reported.
It took nearly two hours to extricate the man from the train after his hand was pinned in the axle. A surgical team from the University of Michigan Hospital was called to the scene for a possible field amputation after about an hour of attempting to extricate the man, but wasn't needed.
After 110 minutes of being pinned to the train, the man was successfully extricated and transported to the University of Michigan Hospital in stable condition.
In addition to the fire department, the Ann Arbor Police Department, Huron Valley Ambulance, Michigan Medicine Survival Flight, the Michigan Medicine Department of Surgery - Division of Acute Care Surgery and the Pittsfield Township Fire Department assisted in the response.
"This was a once in career incident for those involved. Normally, person versus train incidents are fatal. This was a true team effort," the Ann Arbor Fire Department wrote in a Facebook post.
