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KAMLOOPS, B.C. — A Kamloops, B.C., man is recovering from what RCMP in that southern Interior city call a bizarre sequence of events, after he was burned in a grass fire and then hit by a train.

Staff Sgt. Grant Learned says the 51-year-old was drunk when he fell asleep Wednesday afternoon while smoking in the grassy area behind his Kamloops-area home.

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Learned says the man woke to find his clothes on fire and flames around him, but rather than calling for help, he raced to his home, grabbed a bicycle and fled.

Mounties were responding to reports of a man running from the scene of a suspicious fire when they got another call that a pedestrian had been hit by a train along the nearby CP Rail tracks.

Police quickly determined that the two cases were linked, and say the man is now recovering in hospital from a gash to the head, caused by the train, and serious burns caused by the grass fire.

Learned says the man’s woes continue because it’s believed the bike was stolen, and he is also a possible suspect in a September assault on a Kamloops bus driver, but no charges have been laid in any of those cases.

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