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Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger / picture alliance / Sueddeutsche ZeitungOn the last Sunday in April, shortly before the end of the lockdown, Collin Back-Krüger boarded a train parked in Osnabrück at around 3 a.m. The 16-year-old did not touch the overhead line. Nevertheless, electric current suddenly glowed through him, with a temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius. High voltage, such as that applied to the cables for trains, can also discharge without direct contact.
Collin fell from the roof of the car, in which the electricity was burning a hole. His 20-year-old friend, with whom he was at the yard, got burned while trying to help him. When the paramedics arrived, the boy was conscious. This can be reconstructed from medical reports, investigation files and his father's research.
In the hospital, the doctors sedated the teenager. His right foot was as good as charred. The surgeons amputated his leg down to the knee and prepared his seared skin on his head, chest and abdomen for large-scale transplants. Collins' fight lasted twelve days. He died on May 7th at 10 p.m. His father watched helplessly as the doctors tried to resuscitate him.
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