Mark Morgan is lucky to be alive.

Let alone the 30ft plunge from a railway bridge, missing both a live rail and a concrete casing – too weak to shout for help, the people he was with almost did not hear him.

The aspiring design student, on his way home from a night out with two of his brothers, sat on the wall of a bridge near Norbiton station to wait for one of them to catch up.

He said: “It was a bit wet, a bit windy. I just remember being gusted back.

“My hands were in my jacket pockets and I couldn’t get them out quickly enough.

“I remember the bricks going past and I could feel a few bushes, and then it was ‘kerplunk’, on the floor.”

Winded and with two punctured lungs, there was little he could do. He had also suffered a fracture to the back of his skull.

Morgan, 18, added: “I couldn’t see anything, it was pitch black. I could hear them walking past and I couldn’t shout loud enough.

“They walked back and heard me then.”

The last thing he remembers before waking up in hospital is a firefighter’s calming voice.

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Jon Robinson, 42, who trained to be a paramedic before becoming a firefighter in 1997, was first onto the tracks with colleague Richard Cane.

He said: “I thought he was dead. I got half-way down and I could hear him moaning, so that was a good sign.

“I knew it was really important for me to keep him as still as possible.”

Morgan spent two days in intensive care at St George’s Hospital, and a further four on a ward before going home to Enfield.

On Tuesday he visited the New Malden green watch crew who helped save him, and said thank-you with a gargantuan chocolate cake.

How did Mark's family react to the horrifying news?

Mark’s brother, John, is also a firefighter, on Tottenham’s green watch. He said: “I was on my way home from nights and it was my wife’s birthday.

“I was in Tesco looking at chocolates and stuff.

“I got a phone call.”

He immediately called his watch manager, who kept him updated with news from the scene.

He added: “For the first three or four days in hospital if he dozed off he would have that falling or sinking feeling.”

Dad Pat Morgan, 63, said that when he got the call, “All we had was [Mark’s brother] Christopher saying, ‘I think he’s dead’.”

He added: “Then he started talking to him and he got a response. We had a conversation every ten minutes as to what was happening.

“It seemed to get better and better as the night went on.

“I came down as soon as I could in the morning.

“He had broken six ribs, four on the back and two on the front.

“He went to St George’s. They were very, very good.

“We’re just happy to have him alive.”

 

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