A man miraculously survived being hit by a freight train after falling onto the tracks while drunk. You can see a clip of him talking about his injuries here:
Jonathon Smith, from Michigan in the US, lost half his hand and the lower half of his right leg after being crushed by a passing train, but it could have been a lot worse.
Fortunately for Jonathon, his life was saved after a cow pusher on the train rolled his unconscious body out of the way, preventing him from being pulled underneath and killed.
Advert
Jonathon had visited Cleveland, Ohio with some pals to watch the NFL draft and some baseballs in May last year when the incident happened.
He said: “I’ve never been a big drinker, but I ended up getting too drunk.
“For whatever reason, I ran away from my friends. I was trying to make things interesting, I don’t really know what I was trying to do.
“I ran a while, and I ended up waking up five days later in the hospital.”
Jonathon tripped over a railway line and was knocked unconscious, as the impact with the metal cracked his skull open.
Not long later, a freight train started to approach and honked its horn at Jonathon.
He said: “He hit the brakes but, from what I was told, the train had a hundred cars on the back and it didn’t stop in time.”
As Johnathon was lying with his knee pointed up, the cow pusher pushed him away from the train, rather than sucking him under.
He was since told this position is what saved his life.
As the train passed, Jonathon’s shoulder got caught on the tracks and flipped his body off the line, leaving only his hand to be crushed by the passing locomotive.
He was rushed to hospital where he was treated for numerous injuries, including two caved in shins, which were so bad the bones had pushed through the skin, and broken bones on both knees.
He also fractured his skull, broken both eye sockets, his nose, his jaw and three ribs.
The most severe injuries were in his legs and his crushed right hand, and his ring, middle and pinkie fingers, as well as part of his palm, were all amputated.
He later had his lower right leg amputated after he was warned he would need up to 12 more surgeries to try and save it.
He woke up from his medically induced coma 15 days later to find a nurse taking his blood pressure who told him he had been hit by a train.
Jonathon said: “All I said was ‘alright’ – they could've told me you stole an airplane I would've had no memory, there's no difference! I don’t even remember the pain.”
Since recovering, Jonathan uses TikTok, where he’s known as @YonnieMyth, to demonstrate how he lives his life with half his hand missing, such as playing video games.
He has also managed to save $4,000 so he can invest in a mechanical hand that will enable him to play golf again.
Claire Reid