Man who survived being hit by train lost leg and half his hand

By Fiona Jackson via SWNS

This Michigan man miraculously survived being hit by a freight train when he fell on the tracks - leaving him with half a hand.

Jonathon Smith, 26, fell onto a train track while drunk last year, and his hand was crushed by a passing locomotive.

Fortunately, a cow pusher on the train pushed his unconscious body out of the way rather than sucking it underneath, and his life was spared.

But he had to have the lower half of his leg amputated, along with his middle, ring and pinkie fingers on his right hand.

Videos show what life is like - and all the things he can still do with ease, like play video games.

Jonathon, from Caro, MI, said: “I'm missing half my palm, they didn’t just take off my fingers – it looks like an uber long finger!

“I’ve always been a more chilled out guy, appearance to me has never been a big thing.

“I'll put my finger right in your face like ‘check that out!’"

Now Jonathon shares videos on TikTok demonstrating how he is still able to operate a games console, and can even activate the muscles that used to move his amputated fingers.

He said: "If you separated your thumb and pinkie you can feel your palm tighten up.

"I can feel that but five times as tight, you don’t get the movement.

"It doesn’t seem like it happened, if I wasn’t missing body parts I wouldn’t believe it actually happened."

Jonathon drove to Cleveland, Ohio with six of his childhood friends for the NFL Draft and to watch some baseball last May.

After the third day of the Draft, the group went out to a casino for some drinks.

Jonathon said: “I’ve never been a big drinker, but I ended up getting too drunk.

“For whatever reason, I ran away from my friends.

“I was trying to make things interesting, I don’t really know what I was trying to do.

“I ran a while, and I ended up waking up five days later in the hospital.”

Jonathon tripped over a railway line and was knocked unconscious, as the impact with the metal cracked his skull open.

Not long later, a freight train started to approach and honked its horn at Jonathon.

He said: “He hit the brakes but, from what I was told, the train had a hundred cars on the back and it didn’t stop in time.”

He was lying with his knees pointed up, and the cow pusher on the front of the train meant his legs were forced out the way, instead of being sucked underneath.

The former sugar beet factory worker was told that his position on the track is why he is still alive today.

As the train passed, his shoulder got caught on the tracks and flipped his body off the line, leaving only his hand to be crushed by the passing locomotive.

“All in all the conductor is the hero in this story,” said Jonathon.

“If he had been looking at his phone I would have just been a bump, but he was paying attention.

“He jumped out immediately and wrapped both my arms and legs up with tourniquets and called an ambulance.”

Fortunately, they were only eight minutes away from a Metro Health hospital and Jonathon was transported there by ambulance after the conductor called 911 at about 3 am.

He was immediately given donor blood, but the train had caved in both his shins and pushed the bones through the skin of his legs, and bones in both knees were also broken.

As well as fracturing his skull, he had broken both his eye sockets, his nose, his jaw, four ribs and cracked three teeth.

The most severe injuries were in his legs and his crushed right hand, and his ring, middle and pinkie fingers, as well as part of his palm, were all amputated.

He woke up from his medically induced coma 15 days later, to find a nurse taking his blood pressure who told him he had been hit by a train.

Jonathon said: “All I said was ‘alright’ – they could've told me you stole an airplane I would've had no memory, there's no difference!

“I don’t even remember the pain.”

He did notice that his hand had been completely bandaged up.

He said: “I thought they wrapped it with my fingers in my fist, I was kind of naïve."

Although doctors had managed to screw back his left leg with plates and rods while he was asleep, they told him that his right leg did not have a pulse as the veins had died.

Jonathon could either go through up to 12 more surgeries to try to save it, or he could opt to have it amputated.

He said: “It was the easiest decision of my life, just take that f**king leg!”

He spent another 15 days recovering, and then four months learning how to walk with a walker and then a prosthetic leg.

He said: “It's probably one of the easiest things I've had to overcome, once you get a good prosthetic it's like a little different to walk but that’s it.

“It’s honestly a life hack, my dog likes it because I can take it off and have more room on the bed!”

He compares the sensation of moving the muscles that used to control his amputated fingers to the tightness you feel when you spread out your hand.

He said: “I can feel that but five times as tight, you don’t get the movement.

“With these two fingers they said I could do 85% of things once I could start doing stuff again, and they didn’t lie.

“I can open drinks, a lot of people were shocked I can play video games!

“The only thing I can't do is carry extra stuff when my hands are full.”

Jonathon, @YonnieMyth on Tiktok, lives with his parents and pit bull Ziggy, and has saved $4,000 for a mechanical hand that will enable him to play golf again.