By Justine Marklew
ON a sunny Sunday afternoon last year, soccer-mad teenager Ben Morris and his mates were playing football in a train station's car park. Moments later joy turned to horror. When the ball ended up on the train station roof 16-year-old Ben volunteered to climb up and fetch it.
This was the start of a sickening chain of events that he was lucky to survive. Ben got a massive shock from an electricity pylon and was catapulted off the roof and on to the train tracks below. He was flung into the path of an intercity train which severed his right leg as it thundered through Lea Hall station in Birmingham. Yet, despite losing a limb, suffering terrible burns and being scarred for life, Ben considers himself one of the luckiest people alive. After all, on that fateful day in June 2005, he managed to cheat death an incredible four times.
"I don't have much recollection of the accident," says Ben, now 17. "I don't remember getting the electric shock, but I do remember falling on to the train tracks and feeling paralysed. I heard the train coming and could feel the vibrations as it sped along the tracks towards me, but I couldn't move. Thankfully, after that everything is a blur until I woke up in hospital. When I was told what had happened it was a very big thing to take in. Realising what I had been through made me feel privileged to still be here."
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that's some going eh?
