The blog of trimper1

Hit by car, then train, victim says he’s had even worse days

Drunk and aching after getting struck by a car and self-medicating with whiskey, Robert “Ice Man” Evans wasn’t alarmed when he a beam of light appeared out of the darkness as he walked across a narrow railroad trestle in Boulder.

A Burlington Northern Santa Fe whistle blared as an empty coal train approached at 20mph; Evans continued walking his bike toward the oncoming locomotive at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday.

“I seen it coming quite a ways,” Evans said Wednesday while he was receiving treatment at Boulder Community Hospital for a second time within seven hours. “I thought I could beat it.”

A stair railing on the side of the train engine hit Evans on his left side, sending him 10 feet down into Boulder Creek where he landed face first. “I flew about 20 feet in the air into a ditch,” Evans said.

He survived with a few cracked ribs and a throbbing headache, he said. His left side turned black and blue. During a phone interview he could be heard asking a nurse for pain medication and yelping when she stuck a needle in him. “There is no relief for the wicked,” the nurse joked. Evans coughed out a laugh.

After learning that Evans had no serious injury, Boulder police issued him a trespassing ticket in the emergency room for walking on the privately owned railroad tracks. Evans, a frequent occupant of Boulder jail cells, predicted that a judge would sentence him to four days in jail, and he’ll have to serve three.

“It’s an extreme oddity that someone gets hit by a car and a train on the same night,” said Sgt Jim MacPherson of the Boulder Police Department

The 46-year old former auto mechanic is a habitual traffic offender with five drunken-driving convictions, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigations records. After 13 years of living on Boulder’s streets, he has been in scrapes before and says Tuesday night wasn’t his worst.

Two years ago, he was ice fishing in the middle of Nederland Lake when his two six-packs of beer exploded on the ice and all over him. Refusing to move until he caught a bigger fish, his pants froze to the ice. Firefighters had to pour buckets of hot water on the ice to free him, he said. That’s how he got his nickname, “Ice Man.”

On Tuesday, Evans said he spend the day on the corner of Arapahoe Avenue and 28th Street in Boulder “flying cardboard,” street slang for begging. He was holding up a sign that said, “homeless, please help.” After collecting quarters and crumpled dollar bills he got on his bike and was riding on 47th Street when a woman drove into him.

“This lady cut me off. She was looking the other way,” he said. “I bounced off the car twice. I was scuffed up. Nothing really serious.” He rode his bike to Boulder Community Hospital where a nurse bandaged his scraped-up knee and arm.

He then rode his bike to a Taco Bell where begging earned him tacos, and then to a liquor store to buy whiskey and beer. he drank the alcohol and headed northeast toward his camp. After the train hit him, the engineer gave him a hand up and helped him out of the creek, which was about 3 feet deep.

In the ambulance, paramedics cut Evan’s jeans and t-shirt off him. He was a bit apprehensive about losing his only set of clothes, he said: “It wasn’t my good day, was it?”