Can't Touch This: Man Electrocuted by Third Rail

Friday at Back Bay station: it's hot, it's midnight, and the crowd on the platform is ever deepening.

Low-level panic set in when the MBTA's dreaded Mr. Roboto Voice of Sorrow (as opposed to the Worf Voice of Normalcy) comes over the intercom and says,

"Due to a trespasser on the right of way, Orange Line service between Haymarket and Wellington Station is being diverted to shuttle buses."

Everyone knew that it was going to be a long, hot ride to Malden, but no one could figure out what "a trespasser on the right of way" was, exactly.

Turns out the mysterious trespasser was a man who got cooked between North Station and Community College.

At about 10:30 p.m. Friday, a man walked along the Orange Line tracks toward an oncoming train. When the train stopped short without killing him, the man, unharmed, but determined to die in a painful, grotesque manner that would inconvenience a lot of people, deliberately crawled under the train and was electrocuted by the third rail.

An MBTA friend of ours says that suicide by third rail is relatively common.

Image courtesy www.thirdrailmusic.com/