Police deliver ticket to hospital for man critically injured by train
Leobardo Guerrereo, 59, of Bosco, LA has spent the last few days in critical condition at the hospital due to a collision with a train at an unguarded railroad crossing. Guerrereo suffered “14 broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a broken chest plate, head injuries and injuries to his organs,” according to his daughter. In spite of this, the police came to the hospital to deliver the now barely conscious man a ticket.
His daughter also doubts that the accident was in any way the man’s fault. “My father has farmed that land for 50 years he started when he was 10. He always pays attention to the crossing. He’s told us a thousand times to watch out for trains at that crossing. It’s hard for me to believe that there was a whistle.”
For a man with so much experience safely crossing a dangerous rail crossing to become a victim of a critical train accident, it does seem that there must have been some unusual circumstance. The train operator failing to abide by the law and blowing his horn is certainly one possibility, among many others. The sad truth is that it doesn’t take much to make a crossing which is unprotected by any lights or gates to become a deadly, life-threatening zone.
The police acted quite harshly in delivering a highly objectionable ticket such as this to a man in the hospital clinging for his life. The truth of the matter is that it may very well not have been the man’s fault at all that his life was nearly taken from him. It may have been the railroad’s fault. Rather than somewhat cruelly attempting to prove a point which they may discover to be entirely misguided, perhaps the police should be spending their time investigating.
