Man dragged by MAX after coat got stuck in train doors at Beaverton Transit Center

BEAVERTON, Ore. — A man was dragged by a TriMet MAX train Thursday morning after his coat got caught in the train door.

The man is in the hospital in serious condition.

TriMet said it is investigating. It said the person was wearing a long coat and had exited the train. As the doors of the train were closing, the person's coat got stuck in the closed doors, and was then dragged along the platform by the train.

It happened at about 10:30 a.m. at the Beaverton Transit Center.

Thomas Ray said he saw it happen. He called the incident horrible and traumatic.

Ray said he worked to help get the man stable and to the hospital.

"I heard somebody scream, and the train took off," he said.

Ray was on his way home to Hillsboro when he watched a man get dragged down the train platform, banging his head once on a side handrail and then again, before coming out of his coat, landing on the side of the tracks.

Ray put his medical training to use.

"What happened then was I saw the guy wasn’t breathing. And I’d get in trouble with my medical team for touching him. A TriMet security guard came up and grabbed his arm and I said, 'Take his pulse but do not move him,'" Ray said.

Ray said police and paramedics showed up quickly and got the man to the hospital.

TriMet has surveillance video of the incident. The agency is not releasing it since there is an ongoing investigation but says the "the individual put the coat into the door at the last minute. The coat became stuck and the individual was pulled along the platform."

Witnesses said the man was going back and forth, in and out of the doors of the train, when it closed on his jacket.

TriMet said the doors do have sensors on them and it is not saying at this point that the man did it on purpose.

"With something like this, it’s part of the investigation, looking at the timeline and how quickly things happened, and what the situation was with that particular car," said TriMet spokesperson Tyler Graf. "But there are sensors on the doors so that people can’t necessarily get stuck or block the doorway indefinitely."

Blue Line service resumed around 11:50 a.m.