MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) Steve "Reggie" McCoy sat in a USA Medical Center room, his broken foot in a cast.
He was one of four people to escape from falling steel inside of a rail car.
Three others died.
"I'm amazingly blessed just to have my foot crushed," said McCoy, "like... I'm glad to be alive."
Reggie is a member of the train hopping community, a unique click of humanity that literally hops aboard train cars to travel across America.
For Reggie and his three friends, it was a musical adventure.
A banjo, washboard, a set of spoons and a little talent got the combo a few extra bucks for their travels... until Tuesday night in a rail yard in Mobile, where they'd huddled inside a rail car loaded with steel.
"I was on the other side of the gondola and I asked them to join me and they did not," Reggie recalled. "You know, younger kids are stubborn."
So Reggie said he joined them.
And as they slept next to each other, that rail car began to move.
And what was about to happen would end the lives of his friends, and change Reggie's life forever.
"And I noticed we're about to hit something," he recalled. "And my buddy to the right says, you think it's going to slide? Next thing you know, everything smashed. I black out for two seconds, I had this black rush in my head, and I hear blood squirting everywhere. My knees are to my shoulder, stuck. And everyone's dead. I try to wake them up and everyone's dead. I can't get out, I'm screaming bloody murder for help for 10 minutes."
With his foot crushed, Reggie managed to squirm out of the rail car and go for help.
But there was nothing anyone could do.
Reggie said he's been riding the rails for ten years now, ever since he ran away from a foster home at the age of 16.
And though he's been in the accident, he's likely to return to this lifestyle after he gets out of the hospital.
But he said, this time, it will be different.
"And now it makes me feel like I'm going to do better at this," said the train hopper. "I got the opportunity to make the world better in as much of a way as I can."
