Horrific Train Accident Spells the End for College Footballer's Career
At every railroad crossing is a sign posted urging that one never attempt to cross the track when a train is present.
Sadly, the reason for that warning was on display over the weekend, and it cost a college football player not only his career as an athlete, but also his foot.
Derek Loccident, 20, of Central Oklahoma University reportedly tried to crawl under a stopped train Sunday morning when the train started moving. Loccident’s leg was run over, cutting his foot clean off.
Loccident was able to signal for help from a bystander, but doctors could not repair his lower extremity.
Fortunately for him, however, the injury was restricted to the foot. Loccident would have been in far worse shape had the injury happened above the knee, where the severing of his femoral artery could have resulted in death.
The defensive back was a key component of that side of the ball for Central Oklahoma during the season. In the school’s first two games, Loccident recorded 15 tackles.
Please join UCO in sending your support, thoughts, prayers, and well wishes, to sophomore defensive back Derek Loccident and his family. https://t.co/4dQqd4rakk pic.twitter.com/umvcFhgbPF
— UCO Bronchos (@ucoathletics) September 10, 2018
UCO’s athletic department issued a statement in which they showed support for Loccident and his family during this difficult time.
“We are here for him. It’s important for his family to know that too,” said coach Nick Bobeck. “This isn’t about him being a football player right now, it’s about him being a young man that we are here for.”
Exactly what the sophomore was doing on the railroad tracks in the first place, much less something as ill-advised as trying to crawl under a train, remains to be determined.
According to KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, Loccident was walking along the train tracks at about 3 a.m. when a mechanical switch activated, pinning his foot to the track and providing a chopping block of sorts for the train to do its gruesome business.
The railroad company launched an investigation of its own, and if that hypothesis holds true, there is a major cautionary tale to be taken from the incident.
Specifically, moving parts are automated when it comes to train switches. Recently, the technology has advanced to the point where trains are becoming like self-driving cars, and that means that, especially at 3 in the morning, the human operator of a train cannot possibly see a person or animal on the track until it’s too late.
And while you can’t exactly tell livestock to move without the use of fencing, you can tell a person not to get anywhere near railroad tracks. Indeed, most jurisdictions consider it trespassing to enter a rail right-of-way anywhere but at a designated crossing point.
But until Loccident tells his coach or the media what he was doing walking so close to the tracks that he got his foot caught in a signal switch during the witching hour, a critical piece of the puzzle will be missing.
Meanwhile, Central Oklahoma will have to play the rest of this season without its star defensive back and key tackler in the secondary.
And a young man will have the rest of his life to wonder what might have been if he’d been a few feet further away from the rails on that fateful night.
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