Teen Loses Her Legs in Train-Hop Stunt

A Colorado teenager lost both her legs below the knee when she tried to jump onto a moving freight train with her friends and slipped under the rails. One of her friends pulled her out and a nurse who happened to be passing applied tourniquets to her limbs, reports the Longmont Times-Call. The teen, a student at Colorado State University, was airlifted to a Denver hospital for emergency surgery.

"It was pretty gruesome," said a local man who stopped to help. "Thank God the nurse was there. Otherwise, we were using scarves as tourniquets. It wasn't working too well," said Brian Ellwanger. The girl "kept telling me her parents were going to be pissed at her," he said. Ellwanger told her they would be glad she was alive. (More freight train stories.)