A four-year-old boy has been killed when he was sucked under a high-speed InterCity train by the wind from it passing when he stood too close to the tracks.
The tragedy happened when the boy wandered away from the small house in the garden community near Gardelegen in Germany to watch the trains, according to police.
Garden communities typically consist of small second homes on land in or near cities which are mainly used in the warmer summer months, and the boy and his parents were staying at their home in Gardelegen during quarantine.
Cops told local media he was standing four metres away when the train sped by – and he was sucked under it.
He had often been down to the train lines to watch them go by with family members, according to local media, and had sneaked off on his own when the tragedy happened.
His parents were looking for him when he was hit. It was revealed that the tracks are only a short way away from where he was staying and that there was no barrier between the houses in the garden community and the tracks.
Police who said the incident was being treated as an accident confirmed that there was no barrier that would stop the boy walking directly from the place where he was staying to the train line between Wolfsburg and Berlin.
It was reported in local media that he had enjoyed watching the trains. Police investigators said that anything up to five metres away from the track would have been close enough for the boy to have been sucked under the wheels by the train’s wind vortex.
They confirmed that the youngster from the town of Gardelegen was killed instantly at the scene of the accident.
After the accident, which happened shortly before the train passed through Gardelegen train station, the railway line was closed for three and a half hours.
The investigation continues, and the parents are currently being given counselling after the tragedy.
Gardelegen in Saxony is Germany’s third-largest city by area, even though it has only 23,000 inhabitants, and on this week in history (13th of April) in 1945 the Gardelegen massacre occurred where 1016 concentration camp prisoners held locally were burned alive by the Hitler youth and local firefighters under the direction of the SS.
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Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
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