(The following story by Ben Zion Hershberg appeared on The Louisville Courier-Journal website on October 11.)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two Floyd County teenagers were injured Sunday evening while trying to take photographs from a train trestle in Georgetown.
Joseph Summerville, 17, said yesterday that he broke his right wrist and compressed several vertebrae when he jumped to the ground to avoid being struck by a train. Firefighters estimated the height of the trestle at that point to be 30 feet.
Ryan Thompson, who might have been hit by the train, suffered facial lacerations, broke the bone above his right eye and got a “huge black eye,” said his mother, Dana Thompson.
He went home yesterday morning after treatment at University Hospital in Louisville.
“He’s going to be just fine,” his mother said. “We’re more relieved than we can tell.”
Summerville said he and Thompson went onto the trestle to take pictures with the digital camera Thompson had received from his girlfriend for his 18th birthday on Saturday.
They were about in the middle of the trestle when they heard the horn of a train coming around a nearby bend.
“There was nowhere to go,” Summerville said, explaining that he and Thompson ran as fast as they could on the trestle but couldn’t get away from the train, a Norfolk Southern freight.
“When I jumped off,” Summerville said, “it seemed like it was right behind me.”
Dana Thompson said that her son’s injuries lead her to believe he was hit by the train and thrown off the trestle.
“He’s sore all over,” but CT scans and other tests indicated that he has no serious injuries.
The Thompson family lives in Georgetown, not far from the trestle, Dana Thompson said, and she heard police sirens about 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
Floyd County police called at 7:49 to tell her that Ryan was being taken to the hospital because he had been hit by a train, she said.
When the family got to University, she said, Ryan was conscious and talking but couldn’t remember what had happened.
He apologized for causing so much anxiety, she said.
Her son received 22 stitches in his face and 10 in the back of his head, and he has appointments with an eye doctor and an oral surgeon for continuing treatment of his injuries, Dana Thompson said.
Her son and Summerville are both seniors at Floyd Central High School, she said. Ryan Thompson hopes to attend Indiana University or Indiana State University next year and is interested in law, she added.
“This won’t happen again,” she said.
Rudy Husband, director of public relations at Norfolk Southern, said its police department is investigating the incident. He said a 76-car, two-engine train struck one of two people who were trespassing on the railroad’s trestle at 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
He said the railroad has not decided whether it will file charges against the two people who were trespassing and he declined further comment.