By TOM PANTERA
Forum Communications
A Fargo woman was uninjured early Wednesday after a train ran her over in an accident that has police mystified.
Fargo Police Sgt. Greg Lemke said officers responded at 12:16 a.m. to a report of a pedestrian hit by a train on the bridge near the Red River over Second Street North.
The engineer told police he was unable to slow down by the time he saw a person on the tracks and believed he had hit her, Lemke said.
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After stopping the train, the engineer found a female Fargo resident underneath it and pulled her onto the bridge to await emergency personnel. She was conscious and talking.
When police interviewed her at the hospital, the unnamed woman said she had consumed a large amount of alcohol and intended to commit suicide.
She said she had no recollection of seeing the train, nor could she recall being hit.
Lemke said nobody could figure out how the woman remained alive and uninjured. "There was nothing visible on her when I saw her," he said.
Even the engineer was mystified, Lemke said. "He didn't know how the front of the engine didn't hit her. He doesn't know how (the cowcatcher) didn't hit her and move (her) along."
Lemke speculated that the woman, who had a small build, somehow managed to fall between the rails in just the right position to have the train pass over her.
(Tom Pantera writes for The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead, a Forum Communications Co. newspaper)
