Kentucky Teenager’s Railroad Trip Was A ‘Wild’ Ride First Hitched Ride Turns Into Weeklong Ordeal That Had Him Thinking Of Water

Polite, subdued and wearing a Michael Jordan T-shirt, a 17-year-old Kentucky boy talked about the week he had spent locked in a boxcar headed across America.

“It was wild,” Mike Wright said Thursday outside a courtroom where he waited for a Juvenile Court hearing. “I tried to yell, but I couldn’t get anyone’s attention. Nobody could hear me.”

Wright’s comments were the first he has made publicly since he was rescued at the Hinkle railyard near here early Monday, when Union Pacific railroad workers heard his faint call for help.

He went nearly eight days without food or water after he had crawled into the insulated boxcar in Evansville, Ind., and someone locked it from outside.

There was time to think about many things, but he said his thoughts were centered on one subject.

“I just kind of thought about water, actually,” he said.

Wright said he left his home in the rural tobacco country of Kentucky and jumped on a freight train intending to go to the nearby town of Crofton.

But the train didn’t stop in Crofton. It continued across the state line to Evansville.

Wright said he wasn’t too worried, though, even though it was the first time he’d hitched a ride on a train.

“I figured I could just jump a train that would go straight back,” he said.

But it didn’t.

Wright fell asleep, and when he woke up, the door was locked. The train passed through Chicago, Nebraska, Wyoming and Idaho. Wright said it was hard to tell night from day, and he lost track of how long he was inside the boxcar.

Union Pacific officials have said the car’s insulated design probably saved Wright’s life. Otherwise, the heat likely would have killed him.

When rail workers heard his cry for help and opened the door, “I was relieved,” Wright said.

He was treated for dehydration at Good Shepherd Community Hospital, where he remained until Thursday because state officials didn’t know where else to put him.

The hearing was to determine where Wright would stay until he is returned to Kentucky. Officials weren’t saying exactly when that would be.

The Kentucky Department of Human Resources temporarily delayed the return trip by sending the wrong paperwork to the Oregon Department of Human Resources.

The mix-up was corrected Thursday morning, however, clearing the way for the boy’s return.