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LOCAL NEWS
Man Critical After He Tried to Hit a Moving Train With a Metal Bat
posted by Jim Forsyth -
Aug 31, 2018
17

You've heard of somebody being hurt by being hit by a train. Police say a man is in critical condition with injuries he suffered early today when he tried to hit a train, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.

Police say for some reason the man, in his late twenties, was standing on the railroad tracks along Frio City Road on the southwest side about 12:30 this morning.

When a Union Pacific freight train passed, the man apparently tried to hit the train with some sort of metal bat.

The force of the moving train pushed the bat back at the man.

The man tried to stumble away, and made it as far as the 400 block of Brady, about two blocks away, before collapsing.

He suffered major head injuries and a broken arm, and was rushed to SAMMC in extremely critical condition.

Drugs motivated.

That involved a whole series of Darwin-illuminated choices...

sometimes, you don't get 3 strikes !

Let me guess no medical insurance, what is going to be the cost to fix stupid ?

The capacity for stupidity in the human organism continues to impress me.

Well, at least now we know what happens if you hit a train with a bat. Check that one off the list.

Simonkenton7: I shake my head in disbelief.
I have investigated and actually seen humans do some amazingly stupid things during my 29 year law enforcement career but the instance you post about is right up there in the top three or four all time craziest, stupidest, most bizarre things that I know about humans attempting!
If they save him he needs "mental help" for sure.
This would be funny if the cretin involved had not been so seriously injured (actually I did some grinning until I read the last line where the article relays the "man is in extremely critical condition" - I think that means he is gonna die).
Sheesh.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Haaa, this reminded me of one of my stupid moves during my youth.

One time I hung out the passenger side window of my buddy's car and hit a mail box with a wood bat going about 60 mph. The bat broke and splintered at the handle and split both of my hands open and they were bleeding. There was definitely alcohol involved. It kind of ruined my Saturday night. Those guys thought it was funny, but my hands went numb for a while and then they hurt real bad for the rest of the night. The only thing to do at that point was to crack open another beer to kill the pain. Stupid is that stupid does.

Swing batter batter, swing.......

So it's the train's fault, isn't it? Are we going to ban trains now?

UP will end up paying a claim just to get rid of him.

same thing happened to my old lady's ex husband when he pull a bat on me.

Well, varmintguy, I was a paramedic for 14 years and I agree with you, "extremely critical" means he is probably in the morgue right now.
Bat ricocheted off the train and smashed his skull. Got to admit he did pretty well, to stagger 2 blocks before he collapsed.

I wonder if they have video cams in the front of freight trains. Well I bet they do because I have one in the front of my Big Rig.
That clusterf*ck would show up great on the train video cam, they have really massive headlights.

By the way I am from Montana! I was born in Billings. Unfortunately my parents moved to Atlanta when I was 1 year old. Always wished they had stayed in Montana I think I would have been a good hockey player.

That's why all my "train bats" are made of wood.

That ain't what they meant when they said "training camp" kid.

Likely boozed up and mad .

Lad I grew up around - few years older interrupted our backyard baseball game - Ricky Blankenship - wasn't leaving until he got a smack our baseball . Smacks the baseball then kicks a basketball to my older brother Tim to pitch to him - overhanded throw full on swing at the easy to hit basketball - bat came back hit him across the temple - knocked out like Big Bad John hit him with a Coal hammer .
His Mom came up to check on him - wanted to know which one of us hit him - out for maybe 15 minutes - woke up crying like a baby and stumbled home with a knot the size of a goose egg . He said he was dizzy for 2-3 weeks .

He threw a push mower frame -no engine- up on their roof to see what would happen - it rolled off and broke his top front teeth off like little nubs - looked crazy .
He wound up in prison for breaking into a trailer - then torched it to rid the place of his finger-prints . He would have swatted a train on a dare .

There was a time when my uncle was losing a mailbox every week or two. Kids in cars with bats were the problem. He rebuilt the post for the mailbox with brick and mortar, with a large shiny brand new mail box perched right on top. It was a beautiful job, and it was no more than 2 days before the first attack.
In the morning, there was found half a wooden bat, a lot of automotive glass, and a small scuff in the side of the mailbox. You see, when he mounted the box, he did so by in embedding a large piece of 1/2" steel angle 6" × the length of the mailbox , into the brick column, cut a 1/2" slot in the bottom of the mailbox on the right side, and attached the mailbox with liquid nails, slid over the angle.
No one ever got caught, but it never happened again either.

Simonkenton7: Theres plenty of room for you to move back to Montana!
I bet you have seen your share of human "mistakes and screw-ups" resulting in injury.
It was just glorious here in SW Montana today and this evening.
I attended the local high school football game (that started at 7:00 PM) and again the weather was just glorious - from my seat in the top row of the stadium I saw numerous smaller flocks of Geese fly over and across the way I saw a Whitetail doe and fawn feeding in a nearby pasture.
Hope all is well down south.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

If he wakes up, his hands will sting for a month.

My mailboxes (on treated 4x4's) have been run over by fools failing to maintain control of their vehicles twice in the past two years. No payment / reimbursement from either driver. Last rebuild went in on treated 6x6 set in concrete. If they blow through the PT 6x6, I will throw a white oak log on the saw mill for the next iteration.

i set 4 t posts and mounted a board with u bolts between the posts. the mail box is mounted on the board so the t posts are a few inches above the mail box.

haven't lost a box since I built that 10 years ago.

Anyone else betting that the brain damage was done before he got to the tracks?

Methinks he fixed it himself!

Actually, no, they won't. UP never settles out of court on trespasser cases (which includes crossing accidents) and they have very good lawyers. Used to be common practice to settle, but the lawsuits got too popular and expensive. He won't be getting a dime from UP unless he can prove that the train swerved off the tracks to hit him.

We did battle with the mailbox bashers here about 20 years ago. I finally mounted ours on a 6x6 steel post, set in concrete, with same steel stock for tee platform and steel guard over the box. I saw one scuff mark soon after. That had to hurt. Never had another problem, until recently. Couple of neighborhood race care drivers were having a contest on our road. One lost control and attempted to drive over our mailbox. He made it about halfway. Uprooted the post. Car was stuck on top of it when it stopped. That car will never run again. We dug a new hole and replanted the post (with more concrete). Gave it some new paint, which was all it needed. That was worth the laugh.

Cheap race car deterant.

I like to see pics of the damage done to the train ...please...

I'd like to know what his blood / alcohol reading was.... I'm sure they checked for that and also the presence of drugs. Pretty sure that one or both played a factor in this.

Years ago, my hometown put up a school crossing sign at an intersection that was used by many kids. It was a 55-gallon drum with the sign mounted on a bracket on top of it. The local horse shoe courts were by the intersection. It quickly became great sport for the young automotive ashwholes to take a run at the barrel and send it spinning. Some of the shoers quietly filled the barrel with sand one night and took great delight at the results of the next attempt at bump and fly.

Yeah, that works.

Used to live in a neighborhood with a back alley. Trash cans were put out there for pickup. High school kids took to racing down the ally with their trucks and knocking over the cans. Next door neighbor was out back one day filling has trash can with the garden hose. They hit the cans one more time.

...probably, but I've known guys from around here who would attempt that sober. Seems less crazy than picking a knife fight with a grizzly just to get the claws, but people did that too tho about half died trying.

Seems like you'd have to be somewhat coordinated to pull this off, after all he did make contact with the train with the bat as planned with no problem, it was what followed immediately afterwards that turned out to be the problem, by which time things had got out of hand.

A few years before I retired I witnessed a locomotive pulling coal cars hit a triaxel on a crossing in our plant. It knocked the diesel engine out of the truck and the engine ran for about 5 minutes while laying beside the tracks. You don't mess with a train.

Dad had a mailbox get run over a few times - figured he'd mount it on an easily replaceable platform.
A couple of "minor hits" later (think reposition said mail box), some kids haulin' azz centered said mail box, post, and the semi rim he'd mounted it on.
Their (totaled) car wound up on the other side of the road - also our property - in a grove of small aspen trees.
The perpetrator did NOT escape that time!

Also, it never got hit again for years.

I gotta say, that's one of the crazier things you've written, Birdy.

It's not like the train could bob & weave like Ali. Floats like a butterfly? Nah...never seen one do that.

And he probably votes.

we had a 21 year old in town try and touch a moving train last week. the suction of the passing train pulled him under and he was killed. sad and dumb way to go.

The last time I heard of someone reaching out to touch a passing train it was a 14yo girl, and as in Sycamore’s post she was sucked in by the winds generated by the passing cars and killed. But, I know where this baseball bat thing happened and likely the train was going about 15 mph, so suction into the rain was likely not a problem.

OK, so take a yardstick in broad daylight and reach out and merely touch a passing train. The rail bed will be composed of small rocks created by crushing some parent rock material hence the rocks will be sharp-edged and irregular. Furthermore, the rail bed will slope sharply up to the tracks and ties, creating a surface not always easy to stand on much less move around and swing a bat on.

Now, repeat that stunt at 12:30 in the morning.

One of the best teachers I ever had, told a tale from his youth. It seemed to be a right of passage for young men to dive between the wheels of a passing train, then out the other side. Once in, you had to get out or you would be hit and killed by a "tie counter" in the caboose. Many lost fingers and one guy lost an arm. Several died. Those folks who eat Tide pods, try boiling water challenges, and get shot through books as homemade armor, are nothing new. They just found a new way to attempt suicide.

I can tell you unequivocally that it takes no skill at all to whack a passing train with a bat, at any speed below about 40mph. Obviously, living to talk about it afterward is another matter.