Teen avoids getting hit by train

by CYRYL JAKUBOWSKI

A teenager reportedly jumped off a bicycle a second before a Metra train crushed his bike at about 8:03 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 10, near the Gladstone Park Metra train station, 5500 N. Austin Ave., according to a video from an area business.

According to Metra’s Union Pacific Northwest Line Twitter page, trains were delayed at Gladstone Park due to a large police activity.

It was believed that a person had been struck by a train and first respondents were looking for a possible body. A Metra spokesperson confirmed that a train hit a bicycle.

However, an employee of a business near the tracks reported that a video shows a teen escaping certain doom.

According to the video, a teenager is on a bicycle about to cross the train tracks at Austin north of the expressway and suddenly jumps off backwards and is visibly shaken as a Metra train zooms by.

“We timed it. It was like a half-a-second,” the employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

“It shook him a bit and he stands back and collects himself by the fence and disappears from the camera and later comes back searching for the bicycle by looking at the tracks and then leaves using the pedestrian bridge,” the worker said.

The employee said there was a lot of activity from CPD and Metra, and CFD.

“They searched for about 30 minutes and it was over,” the worker said, and that the teenager was very lucky to be alive.

It is unclear if the remains of the bicycle were found.