Homeless Man Found Dead Under Rail Car

OXNARD — A homeless man who spent the last few weeks sleeping on a shabby yellow couch a few feet from the railroad tracks opposite an Oxnard rescue mission was crushed Tuesday by a train, police and witnesses said.

Oxnard firefighters found Ralph Beyer’s body pinned beneath a railroad car about 3:30 p.m.

Next to Beyer were a blue sleeping bag, a near-empty case of beer and sections of a crushed yellow couch, Oxnard Fire Capt. Mike O’Malia said.

“My understanding is that the [train] cars had been there several days and that he might have been sleeping under one of them,” O’Malia said.

At 2:50 p.m., O’Malia said, a third car was coupled to the two where Beyer may have passed out or sought shade for a nap.

John Higgins, a staff member at the Ventura County Rescue Mission on East 6th Street, said Beyer, a slender man with a beard and unruly hair, occasionally slept in one of the mission’s two large tents.

Late Tuesday morning, Higgins said, he gave Beyer a turkey sandwich and an apple, but wouldn’t let him enter the mission because Beyer was “too drunk and carrying a case of beer.”

A crowd of onlookers watched as firefighters and deputies from the medical examiner’s office donned blue gloves and inflated a yellow air bag below one of the train cars so that they could remove Beyer’s body.