A homeless man — born in India but a U.S. citizen — was killed just before daybreak Wednesday when he was struck by a train pulling into the Georgia State rail station.
The man was identified as Mahendra Kumar Ghelabhai Patel, 55. Though he had “no fixed address,” officials were able to locate his family to tell them of his death.
MARTA does know why Patel was on the track or how he got there, but he was already in the path of the train when it pulled into the station just before 5:30 a.m. There were no passengers on the train.
The station was shut down for nearly five hours, so a “bus bridge” ferried passengers between the Five Points, Georgia State and King Memorial stations. The station was reopened at 10:15 a.m., with eastbound and westbound trains both using the westbound platform. Normal operations on both platforms resumed by 11:30 a.m.
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