Jarman transferred to Miami after attending his freshman year at a college in Colorado, police said.
The Butler County Coroner’s Office listed the cause of death as multiple traumatic injuries, but a determination on the manner of death is pending investigation.
This was the fourth train-related death of a student in Oxford in the past eight years, and one of the other accidents took place at approximately the same location, said Sgt. Jon Varley of the Oxford police. The site is a considerable distance away from Hahne Hall, Varley said.
“From what we can tell, so far, it doesn’t appear that he was aware the train was coming,” Varley said.
Many people in Oxford cross the tracks on foot as kind of a short cut, unaware they are trespassing on private property around the intersection of South College and Foxfire Drive, the sergeant said.
“The person who found Mr. Jarman on the tracks was using them to cut through to go to McDonald’s that morning. So we do have a lot of people, even coming from College Corner Pike that would use the railroad tracks as an avenue to quickly get into town,” he said.
Oxford police and the coroner’s office are awaiting results of toxicology tests, which could take weeks. Jarman had been with friends earlier in the evening, but he was apparently alone when the train struck him at approximately 3 a.m., Varley said. The conductor of the CSX train did not realize anyone had been struck, and the train did not stop.
Detectives are working with the coroner’s office, Miami University Police Department and CSX personnel to determine the circumstances that led to Jarman being on the tracks that morning. Burial will be in Colorado and the family is en route back to Denver.
The prior train fatalities took place in March 2005, April 2007 and October 2007, Varley said. Two of the prior incidents were determined to be accidents; the October 2007 death of student Joseph Eger was ruled a suicide.
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