Hand stuck in train door: woman dragged along for miles in Germany | Abroad

A conductor noticed the hand in the door around 7 p.m. Monday evening in the moving train between Donauwörth (Bavaria) and Aalen (Baden-Württemberg), northwest of Munich. He quickly pressed the emergency brake, after which the train came to a stop just before the station in Nördlingen.

The woman was found outside the door. She was seriously injured “on the feet, legs and upper body”, local media report on the basis of a police statement. The injured traveler was taken to a hospital in Nördlingen where she received the necessary care. According to local media, her current situation is still unknown. The other passengers were also removed from the train.

The police therefore suspect that at one of the stations for Nördlingen the woman opened the door on the wrong side of the train, not on the platform side, and got out. “When she apparently noticed the mistake and wanted to get back on the train, the train door closed,” the police report reads. “The train continued its journey, apparently dragging the woman for miles.”

According to local media, the train consisted of wagons built between 1966 and 1975. These would not have a mechanism that prevents the doors on the other side of the platform from opening.

The Dillingen police have launched an investigation. It is unclear how many kilometers the woman was dragged by the train, but the last station before her hand was noticed is about four kilometers away. The first station after Aalen is thirty kilometers away. Because, according to the police, there were only five passengers on the train at the time of the incident, no one saw the accident happen.