Just lucky to be alive. That's how a Sauk Rapids man -- from his hospital bed -- described how he felt after being run over by a freight train just north of St. Cloud.
Christopher Gilhoi, 30, was on his way home after a night at a bar with friends and was lying between the rails when two locomotives and five cars, "traveling slower than usual," ran over him Saturday night.
Gilhoi said Monday that he remembers almost nothing from the incident, chalking up his foggy memory to a concussion he suffered and being "relatively drunk" at the time.
He did recall that when the train stopped near 1st Street S. and Railroad Avenue in Sauk Rapids, he was under one of its cars.
"Just lucky, I guess," is how he summed up his survival, yet "stupid for being there in the first place."
Gilhoi was in St. Cloud Hospital Monday in fair condition. Along with the concussion, Gilhoi ticked off a long list of injuries that included a mangled ankle, a cracked vertebrae and other scrapes and bruises.
"All in all, I came out pretty good -- from what people tell me," he said.
A spokesman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway said the train was traveling 23 miles per hour and bound for Galesburg, Ill., when the operator "just saw an object" on the tracks and applied the brakes.
When the train stopped, Gilhoi was under the fifth car behind the two locomotives, spokesman Steve Forsberg said.
In a news release, the Sauk Rapids Police Department issued an understated warning to the public: "It is not safe to walk or be on the railroad tracks."
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