Mother of man struck by train thought knock on door was son who forgot his key. Then she learned the terrible truth.

Thomas Pennington, of Roosevelt Boulevard, was struck and killed by a train while he was walking on the tracks near Wildwood Road and Manchester Avenue Sunday night, according to police.

He was pronounced dead at the scene around 8:25 p.m., according to a Middletown police report.

Tina Pennington said she was sleeping in her apartment Sunday night when there was a knock at the door.

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She thought it was her son because he had lost his key.

Instead, it was a Middletown police officer, an investigator for the Butler County Coroner’s Office and a local pastor.

When Pennington looked out the peep hole in the door and she saw a police officer, she thought: “Oh what has Tommy done?”

Then she was told her 35-year-old son was hit and killed by a train.

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Pennington leaves behind a wife, a daughter and son, a step-daughter, father and brother, his mother said.

She has “no idea” why her son was walking those tracks because he has no friends in that area, she told this news outlet.

Pennington, 35, was a 2001 Edgewood High School graduate, according to his mother.