WORKERS at the Foster Yeoman freight yard made the gruesome discovery of a dead body on Wednesday 7th October.
Yard staff found the corpse of a man in his late teens in an open wagon of a Freightliner train just before 10.00am. The police were called and the area was sealed off while forensic experts examined the scene.
The man, who has not yet been publicly identified, had sustained severe facial injuries which were not consistent with having been struck by the train. They are believed to have been caused by the man’s fall into the back of the train wagon.
An inquest has been called to determine the exact cause and circumstances surrounding the man’s death, but police have ruled out foul play.
A British Transport Police spokesperson said, “BTP received reports at 9.49am, Wednesday 7th October, that a body had been found on a train at a freight yard near to Westbury rail station, Wiltshire. Officers attended the scene alongside colleagues from Wiltshire Police and paramedics and the body of man in his late teens was found in a freight wagon.
“I can confirm that we are no longer treating this death as suspicious. We have ruled out third party involvement, but the exact cause of death is something for the coroner to decide.”
The dead man is believed to be a missing person from the Birmingham area. Items of his clothing had been found on a railway bridge at Acocks Green station, to the south of Birmingham.
Initially the police had been considering the scenarios that the man had jumped into the wagon, fallen from a bridge or that foul play was involved. The train that the man was discovered in had brought stone from Leicestershire to Westbury for Network Rail. It departed Leicestershire at 10:45pm on Tuesday 6th October, arriving in Westbury at 3:45am the following morning.
