A transient in his 50s who apparently committed suicide by train Saturday “was nearly cut in two,” according to a Navel Gazing “Top Commenter” who “could not have been more than 15 feet away” from the gruesome spectacle. The man was the second of two people believed to have taken their own lives with the help of oncoming trains in Southern California Saturday. Around nine hours before the Tustin incident, a woman in her thirties laid down on the tracks in the path of an oncoming Union Pacific freight train and was killed.
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It was about 5:20 p.m. when the unidentified man wandered onto the tracks about 150 yards west of Harvard Avenue, north of Edinger Avenue. He was struck by Pacific Surfliner train 582, which operates between Los Angeles and San Diego and had 74 passengers on board, according to Amtrak.
The train's maximum speed in that area is 79 mph, but it was not going that fast as it was only two miles out of the Santa Ana station heading south, Amtrak added.
Our regular commenter, who goes under the handle “20ftjesus,” says he was riding on the nearby bike trail when he saw the Pacific Surfliner come to a halt because “a homeless man was nearly cut in two by Amtrak.” The witness reports he was initially closer to the victim than Amtrak employees who had gotten off the train to investigate.
“He was a white male, sunburned skin, maybe 50s, slim, shaggy beard, old clothes. His belly was wide open and the cut was clean like a surgical knife slit him from end to end. … The body was between Harvard and Jamboree. There's a little used walking trail next to the tracks ON THE SOUTH side (not the often used north side) and that's where I saw his body. It couldn't have been more than 15 feet away; all his guts exposed.”
The conductor waited near the body as Mr. Jesus rode his bike back to Harvard and flagged down a female Irvine police officer, who “was courteous enough to thank me then sprinted down the track. Ambulance and the fire department were next. Tustin PD got there last.”
A nice bike ride spoiled. He'll never forget it, though.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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