NEWS: A death at Waverley

By MARK McLAUGHLIN
Edinburgh Evening News
24 December 2009

RAIL regulators are conducting an investigation following the death of a man at Waverley Station.

The 47-year-old, from Dundee, appeared to fall on the concourse at around 9.20am yesterday while carrying his infant daughter. He died later in hospital.

The child, thought to be either two or three years of age, was uninjured and was taken into the care of a relative.

It is still unknown whether the man lost his footing on the wet concourse or collapsed as a result of a medical condition.

Yellow 'wet floor' signs were clearly visible in the area where the man collapsed.

Edinburgh was engulfed in a 5cm blanket of snow yesterday, and thousands of morning commuters would have trampled snow into the concourse.

The Office of Rail Regulation were on-site yesterday to ensure that proper procedures were followed before and after the incident.

Network Rail staff found the man lying on the concourse next to a Marks & Spencers delivery truck at the foot of the vehicle ramp.

The vehicle remained cordoned off by police, who were investigating the possibility that he may have hit his head on the truck on the way down.

An ambulance crew rushed to the scene and arrived to find the man in cardiac arrest.

An ambulance service spokesman said: "He was taken to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where he remained in cardiac arrest for the duration of the journey."

A British Transport Police spokesman confirmed that he later died in hospital.

He added: "Enquiries are ongoing into the circumstances surrounding his death although at this stage there do not appear to be any suspicious circumstances.

"It is anticipated that a postmortem will take place in due course to establish his cause of death and full report will be submitted to the local Procurator Fiscal by Lothian and Borders Police."

Police said the cause of the fall is not likely to be known until after the postmortem.

A spokesman for Waverley Station operators Network Rail said: "We can confirm that a man collapsed at the station.

"We are cooperating with British Transport Police and Lothian and Borders Police in their investigations.

"While the cause of death is currently unknown, it is a tragic thing to happen, especially at this time of year."

"In relation to the management of the snow, our normal precautionary measures were in place to deal with wet and snowy conditions."

It is the second death to occur after an incident at the station in the last fortnight, after a teenager who was found lying with a severed foot on December 10 died from his injuries in hospital a week later.

It has still not been revealed how the teenager came to be on the track, although there were fears that he may have fallen from Waverley Bridge, been hit by a train, or both.

Police confirmed that the teenager's death was not suspicious.