A man carrying a cane got his coat caught on the side of a light-rail train as it was pulling away from a station at the 16th Street Mall and California Street and was dragged into a concrete stand.
The man was conscious and speaking after his head apparently slammed into a metal drain pipe during the 3:10 p.m. accident, said Demetrius Mitchell, 35, who was standing about 10 feet away when the accident happened.
Mitchell said he had just gotten off the light rail train carrying his bicycle when he saw the bald man in his 60s, who was very thin, apparently trying to get the door open so he could board the train.
“He was carrying a bag of clothing or something. He raised his arms. He was trying to push a button on the train, got caught on something and he fell under the train,” Mitchell said. “I quickly turned away so I wouldn’t see it. It sounded like he was crushed. I thought he was cut in half.”
However he was only dragged several feet until he crashed into the concrete barrier, he said.
“The train never even slowed down. I thought he was dead. Someone tried to move him and he started screaming really loud,” Mitchell said. “I told them they shouldn’t move him.”
He said they were trying to get him moved away from the tracks on the East side of California before another train came.
“I was praying the whole time,” said Mitchell, while he waited for an ambulance.
There was a pool of blood near the tracks that was mostly washed away by a light rain. The man was still conscious as he was loaded into an ambulance, Mitchell said.
Denver police Sgt. Greg Buschy confirmed that a man was injured while trying to board the train. The victim was alive when he was rushed to the hospital.
Several teen-age girls who witnessed the accident were badly shaken. One girl was sitting against a door on the ground sobbing as she spoke into her cellular phone.
Several RTD employees standing near a rectangle of yellow crime tape stretched at around the bus station said they weren’t allowed to talk about what happened.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, or
