“I need 911. I think I’m cut in two.” The operator responds, “Someone got run over?”. “It was me. I guess I’m going into shock. Hurry up, ma’am, because I’m about to pass out.” These are the remarkably calm words of rail worker Truman Duncan, moments after he was run over by a train.
June 25, 2006, was just another sweltering Sunday in Cleburne, Texas. Duncan, a 36-year-old third-generation rail worker and father of three, was working at Gunderson Southwest Rail Services. He was coupling cars together – a routine job he’d done a thousand times before – when the 20,000-pound railcar suddenly lurched forward.
He slipped from the coupler and tumbled beneath its undercarriage. Instinct kicked in: he grabbed a knuckle joint, trying to run backward and leap clear. Instead, the wheels caught his legs—one snagged between steel brake and axle, the other pinned under the relentless grind.
Duncan was dragged 75 feet along the gravel-strewn ties, and his body was severed just above the pelvis. He reached down: “I felt my hip… and there it was gone.” But his cellphone, clipped to his belt, avoided destruction.
That twist of fate would save his life, and he proceeded to make a truly inspiring 911 call. While waiting for paramedics in the gravel, half his body no longer attached, a train still on top of him, and rapidly bleeding out, Duncan figured it was time to say some goodbyes, just in case he didn’t make it. His 19-year-old son Trey picked up his call, later telling the press: “I told him I loved him with all my heart, and he was the best dad I could wish for.”
It took 45 agonizing minutes for first responders to arrive, who were then faced with the difficult job of getting him out from under the train alive.
How do you survive this?!
In an ironic twist, the sheer weight of the train on his lower body may have been what saved him, with doctors theorizing it kept his blood pressure just high enough to avoid death. Even so, emergency room surgeon Dr. David Smith figured he’d soon be signing a death certificate when he was informed of the extent of Duncan’s injuries:
“When I first heard the report … I thought for sure I’d be going down to pronounce somebody dead. When I got there, he was critical, he was unresponsive and his blood pressure was quite low.”
Duncan was in surgery for 3 1/2 hours, then in a coma for three weeks, and underwent 23 further surgeries over the next four months before being released from the hospital. He lost both legs, his pelvis, and a kidney – but he’s not only alive but happy.
He later told reporters he never thought he was going to die: “I wanted to see my babies grow up, just like everybody else. I just wanted to live so I could see my kids grow up.” Duncan eventually returned to work at his old company and went on to help soldiers who’d lost limbs in war deal with the psychological impact: “[I] let them know life is good, goes on.”
As of writing, Duncan is semi-retired and now mentors young rail workers, summing up his experience in 2013 by saying: “Pain is temporary, but what keeps you going—your family, your drive—that’s forever.”
