A construction worker sleeping on train tracks was killed by a freight train on Sunday in Takeo province’s Samrong district.

Deputy district police chief Khun Yan said the 36-year-old victim was drunk at a wedding a few kilometres from the Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville freight line that crossed his route home.

“He could not make his way home, so he slept along the way,” he said.

“When he got drunk he would never listen to anyone, he is wild,” said the ill-fated man’s village chief, Sor Sangva.

Khun Yan’s men were on patrol that night, and sighted the victim sleeping in the road. Telling him to move on lest a car hit him, he moved to a cucumber farm.

The cucumber farmer told police that they “slept together at the farm but he doesn’t know when he woke up and went to sleep on the railroad”.

According to Yan this was not the first such fatality in the district, but railway authorities have remained silent.

Royal Railway safety officer Louk Ratana said he had heard nothing of the case but if a complaint was filed an investigation and compensation typically followed.