A local man in his early 20s was hit in the head by a train in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Police were called out to the train crossing by Chevron at about 2:30 a.m. and found a man unconscious beside the train tracks with a bleeding head.
Witnesses stated that the man left the Buffalo Beach bar and saw the train coming saying: “I can beat the train” and he ran towards it.
One male witness said he pulled the man back just as he was about to cross in front of the train but the train still hit him in the head. Police said that he also hurt his ankle.
The injured man was taken to hospital in Vanderhoof where he is recovering.
“If he had been a second sooner he would have been hit head on and the train would have killed him,” said Sergeant Dave Beach with the Vanderhoof RCMP.
“The side of the train hit him and flipped him back.
“The young man drank his spirits and then decided to take his chances crossing the railway track … he saw the train coming and tried to beat it.
“It’s just very dangerous – it happens quite a bit around Canada,” said Beach.
He added that at least a couple of hundred people a year die around Canada from trying to race trains and getting hit.
