Man crushed by train while sleeping on rail

A 28-YEAR-OLD man was killed by a moving train in Phnom Penh’s Por Sen Chey district on Monday night after he apparently fell asleep on the tracks, police said yesterday.

Theng Kossal, chief of police in Por Sen Chey’s Choam Chao commune, said that victim Moeun Chhun lived near the railroad tracks, and had been seen by locals sitting on the tracks chatting with his girlfriend earlier in the evening. He then allegedly went out drinking with a group of friends late at night.

“After he returned from drinking wine, he walked to sit on the railway tracks and chat with his girlfriend again on Facebook, and maybe he was drunk, [so] he fell asleep on the railway, causing the train to crush him to death,” Kossal said.

Chhun’s family did not file a complaint with the authorities seeking compensation for the accident from the train’s operator, Royal Railways, he added.

A Royal Railways staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said yesterday that in several similar incidents in the past, his company had never paid compensation to a victim sleeping or sitting on the railway because “it is not our mistake”, though they would furnish money for the funeral, as they did for Chhun.

“We educated the people who live along the railroad to not sit or sleep or putting anything on the railroad, or to scatter electric wires over the railway,” he said, adding that a team will investigate the incident.

Every year, at least three people die in train crashes, he said.