Wheaton College is mourning an 18-year-old freshman baseball player who was struck and killed by a freight train in downtown Wheaton, Ill., on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026, a loss that has drawn tributes from his coach, his parish priest and the Michigan high school where he once played.
Tomassino “Tommy” Offer, a freshman on the Wheaton College Thunder baseball team, died following the incident, which happened around 10:15 a.m. near Main Street and Front Street, west of the college campus in the suburb west of Chicago. The team said it was mourning the loss of its teammate.
According to the regional transit agency Metra, Offer had stopped at the tracks for a westbound Union Pacific freight train. A Metra spokesperson said witnesses reported that once the westbound train cleared the intersection, he started across the tracks and was hit by an eastbound freight train traveling the opposite direction.
Published accounts of the moments before impact have differed on one detail. One account described Offer as stopped in his car at the railroad crossing; another described him as walking on Main Street that morning. Metra’s description of what happened at the crossing was the same in both.
What Investigators Have Said
The incident remained under investigation as of Tuesday, Oct. 13. Officials said they had seen nothing to suggest the death was anything other than a tragic accident.
A Final Wave at Church
Offer, a Michigan native, had attended church that morning and was driving afterward. Before he left, he spoke with the Rev. Santos Castillo of St. Michael Catholic Church. The priest said Offer was headed to Chicago with a friend named Joe, and that the teenager waved to him on his way out — a goodbye Castillo said he had no way of knowing would be Offer’s last at the church.
The detail has since become part of how the Wheaton community is remembering him: a freshman athlete, new to campus, spending a Sunday morning at Mass before a day trip into the city with a friend.
Tributes in Wheaton and Michigan
“Our team is grieving and our hearts are heavy as we grieve alongside Tommy’s family and friends,” Wheaton College head baseball coach Matt Husted said in a statement. He added that the program takes peace in knowing Offer was strong in his faith.
Husted described Offer as sincere in every part of his life — joyful, but also a competitor, qualities the coach said made him a great teammate. The freshman was genuinely curious about the people around him, Husted said, and had built a wide network on campus that reached well beyond the baseball roster.
Wheaton College held a memorial on the night of Sunday, Oct. 11. The following day, Monday, Oct. 12, students from the college and members of the surrounding community gathered at St. Michael Catholic Church to honor him.
Notre Dame Preparatory School in Pontiac, Mich., Offer’s former high school, also remembered him. “Tomassino Offer was an outstanding student and an even better young man,” the school said, adding that he was loved by teachers and classmates and had many friends — among them the soccer teammates alongside whom he won a state championship, and his baseball teammates.
Those two sports bookended a short athletic career that was just beginning at the college level. Offer had arrived at Wheaton as a freshman on a Thunder roster that is now preparing for a season without him, with his coach publicly leaning on the faith he said defined the teenager.
The crossing where Offer died sits in the heart of downtown Wheaton, steps from the shops and restaurants that line Front Street and a short walk from the campus he had only recently joined. Metra’s account of the crash — a stopped pedestrian or motorist, a passing westbound train, then an eastbound train on the adjacent track — describes a scenario that rail safety officials have long warned about at multi-track crossings.