An ISU student died Thursday after he was hit by a train on Wednesday night.

Dan Logeman, 22, senior in horticulture from Malvern, was struck by a westbound Union Pacific train near the North Dakota Avenue railroad crossing Wednesday at about 8:20 p.m.

Sgt. Randy Kessel, Ames Police public information officer, said after being informed of the accident by Union Pacific officials, Ames Police found Logeman’s body about 500 feet west of the crossing.

Logeman was airlifted via helicopter to Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, where he was pronounced dead at 4:14 a.m., said Mercy spokeswoman Amy Baker.

Associate Dean of Students Pete Englin would not confirm Thursday whether Logeman’s family had been contacted and offered no comment.

Kessel said police are trying to determine why Logeman was on the train tracks.

“Investigators will be talking to roommates and other individuals he knew to find out why he was in the area, but as of now we consider it to be an accident,” he said.

The North Dakota Avenue intersection was one of three Ames railroad crossings, along with the Scholl Road and Hazel Avenue crossings, equipped with automatic train whistles designed to cut down on noise pollution, said Scott Logan, Ames traffic engineer.

The whistles automatically blow when a train is going through the intersection, making it unnecessary to sound the train-mounted horn. Logan said the train-mounted horn is twice as loud as the automatic variety and is built to direct the sound toward the streets.

“The noise from the train is intended to just go down the street,” he said. “Pretty much directly down the streets.”

Kessel said police were not willing to speculate whether the automatic horns may have played a role in the accident.

Logeman’s death marked the fourth time in the past year that a pedestrian had been killed by a train in Ames. On Dec. 16, Montana native James Lawson, 54, was struck and killed at the Duff Avenue crossing. James Farrell, 39, of Illinois, was killed at the same crossing on May 16. On April 2, Robert Bass, Jr., 21, Nevada, died after a train struck him at the Clark Avenue intersection.