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'The Luckiest Girl In The United States': Teen Walking Along Train Tracks With Earbuds In Hit By Train, Suffers Only Minor Injuries

MT. PLEASANT (KDKA) -- A train struck a woman who was walking along railroad tracks in Mt. Pleasant Thursday afternoon.

It happened around 4:30 p.m.

A 19-year-old woman from Uniontown was walking in the middle of the railroad tracks near West Main Street when she was hit by a slow-moving Southwest Railroad train, ending up beneath the first engine.

The teenager was wearing earphones at the time, and she apparently did not hear the train engineer blowing his air horn. Witnesses told investigators they heard the train horn going off.

"She was between the two rails. The train went over her body about six to eight feet, and then it was stopped. And then when we got on scene, our rescue personnel and ambulance personnel went underneath the train, put her on a backboard and we removed her," Mt. Pleasant Fire Chief Jerry Lucia said.

The victim was awake and conscious when she was removed from beneath the train. The fire chief said she did not talk about the accident.

She was taken to a local hospital, then flown to Pittsburgh.

Her injuries, miraculously, were not very serious.

"She had an injury on the back of her head, on the back of her head, where it looks like the plow part of the front of the engine went over her head, and then she had a broken ankle. She's the luckiest girl in the state of Pennsylvania, in the United States," Lucia told KDKA News.

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