Collingwood station tragedy described by eye witness

“BJ” commented on this post in response to my enquiry whether anyone knew the circumstances of a train running over a man at Collingwood Station in mid-September. It’s good writing. I have edited it a little. If anyone has any views about the appropriateness of publishing this to the world, I’m willing to listen. This is BJ’s account:

“I walk onto the train platform I see a bloke on the other side jump down and start to cross the tracks. … Thinking little of it I watch him struggle across the tracks to my side, to the edge of the platform, probably 20 metres away, and in the distance I hear the train too and can make out the headlights up the tracks. So the station platform in raised and supported on a steel substructure and this bloke is having difficulty jumping up, he jumps up and flops his top half on the platform but doesn’t have a wall to kick up from and so falls back again. He looks up and sees the train probably 150 metres away at this stage and keeps trying to get up. At this stage I’m thinking to myself, this guy is pretty keen, and soon it becomes clear that he’s not going to get onto the platform…. This kid and I yell at the bloke who’s about 20metres away from me, ‘Get down, LIE DOWN! GO UNDER THE PLATFORM, WATCH OUT THE FUCKING TRAIN! GET DOWN!!!!!’ In one of those intense few seconds where everything builds up to an incredibly slow motion crescendo, I yell and bound forward a few steps, the kid on the other platform is on his feet yelling, this bloke is perched half on the platform, his legs and lower torso dangling below and the train is 20metres away, moving fast but braking hard…. I see the driver standing thorugh the front window, waving his arms and yelling, I see this bloke try to lean forward putting his chest more onto the platform in a futile attempt to avoid the oncoming, I see him turn his head first toward the headlights and then at the last minute away, and then as the train hits him, squashing him between the platform and its huge, heavy, unstoppable steel body I look away. I’m yelling ‘aaahh fuck nooo, fuck shit fuck shit noooo’, but I hear the sickening crunching of his body being rolled along the platform and dropping below. The sound like snapping a fistful of matches and I know for sure he’s fucked. I stand there too scared to look for a moment and not sure if this is real or some bizarre dream, a surreal alter existence I’m just imagining, but I know it’s real.

The express train stops and a carriage full of passengers in the lit cabin stare blankly out at me on the dimly lit platform, wondering why the express has stopped in such a hurry and why I’m yelling on the platfrom, “NOO, FUCK, AW FUCK SHIT NOO”. But nobody moves. I brave a look down the side of the platform, between the gap made by the train and the concrete edge, only about 12cm (4-5″) that he had just been violently made to fit through. He’s lying face down, a little bloody, but in better condition than I was thinking, I’d envisaged a much more bloody mess. But he’s fucked, he doesn’t respond to me calling and I can’t see him breathing. I stand and see the driver bundle out of the front of the train, he’s swearing also and fumbling with his phone. I already have the line to the ambulance and as I get put through I run up to him and try to comfort him… ‘I’m calling them, fuck mate, nothing you could have done about that, fuck, you alright?, fuck, I’m calling them’, I pat him on the back, he’s just swearing and totally freaking out. The kid from the other side of the platform has run around the front of the train and is there, he looks at me and I point, he runs under the platform towards to bloke and I’m trying to explain to the ambos ”We need an ambulance to Collingwood station, a bloke’s just been hit by a train, he’s fucked, he just got squashed between the platform and the train, what, yes an ambulance, Collingwood, what, yes, what”. It’s hard to hear, on the other end of the line they are sitting in a call room with all sorts of background bleeping and talking and I’m pumped with adrenalin, so pumped I could have been shot and I wouldn’t have noticed. They ask all the expected questions, get the name and number thing out of the way, and meanwhile I’m headed back to the bloke lying under the train. The passengers are all standing in the carriage waiting for the train to get underway and take them to where they paid to be. It’s strange that there are hundreds of people just there and yet the driver, me, the kid under the platform and the dying bloke are the only ones acting in this play. When I look down to him I see the kid freaked out and wondering helplessly what to do, there’s all sort of panicked yelling and I’m speaking with the emergency operator. ‘Is he conscious?’, ‘No’, ‘Is he breathing?’, ‘Not sure’. ‘Can you feel his breath in front of his face?’ I say to the kid, and again, he’s in shock I think, he’s not really responding, just a bit like a rabbit in the headlights. ‘Put your hand in front of his face, can you feel his breath?’ I say it again, and he snaps into it, he feels for the guy’s pulse, ‘He seems to be still alive’, he says, and at this stage I can see the bloke is sort of breathing. It’s more like he’s trying to do stomach crunches lying on his face, gently though, weakly. Now I can see more blood and a huge gash on his stomach, the kid says ‘he’s been stabbed’, I repeat this to the operator, but then I think, no that’s where he has been torn apart by the platform. The operator says ‘If he’s breathing you should put him on his side, the coma position’, but i think he’s far too fucked for that, I suggest I don’t think we should move him, and then tell the kid and another bloke down there now to try and turn him on his side….. It’s all a freakin mess and soon the police arrive. The police station is all of 300 metres away, and they take over..

Fuck that is intense,’there’s the driver, no there, yeah, under the platform, yeah I called them, they’re coming, just me and that kid under there’…. fuck….. intense…. they ask me to sit down, the ambos arrive and the passengers start to come out of the train. Within 5 mins the guy is dead, the police are in crowd control mode, I’m running over and over things in my head, over and over, I don’t see the kid again, and…. phew, fucking intense….. I gotta get outta there, I gotta find some friends, I gotta get some comfort, I ask if they need me here, no, so I’m outta here. I’m so pumped I’m almost ready to vomit. The driver must have been the same, he’d been vomiting nothing solidly for the past 10 mins…. I have to run, so I run down the road until I feel tired rather than totally buzzed….. Fuck , what the hell was that, what the fuck. fuck that.

That simple.”