WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -A man in handcuffs was hit by two commuter railroad trains Wednesday morning just hours after sending a distraught text message to a friend, a railroad spokeswoman said.

Painkiller prescription bottles were found near the man, and his mangled body was being autopsied for clues about whether he was dead before he was run over. The Westchester County medical examiner’s office said late in the afternoon that no cause of death had been established.

Metro-North Railroad spokeswoman Marjorie Anders identified the victim as 34-year-old William Jenkins, of the Bronx. She said he sent the text message to a friend at 3:25 a.m. Details of the message were not made public.

Anders said the man, apparently lifeless, was spotted at 6:50 a.m. on the northbound tracks of the Mount Vernon West station by the crew of a train.

that carried no passengers. She said the train did not have time to stop before five cars ran over the body.

A check of the previous train that went through the station proved that it also had struck the man, with the crew apparently unaware, she said.

Deaths on the tracks usually turn out to be suicides, and the text message seemed to support that theory. But after the metal Smith & Wesson handcuffs were found on the victim’s wrists, police and prosecutors treated the train station, a few miles north of the New York City line, as a crime scene.

The body lay under the train for more than three hours, shielded by a yellow tarp from commuters on the platform, as detectives and an investigator from the district attorney’s office examined the area.

Northbound service was interrupted briefly, but trains were soon using a second track to go around the grim scene.

Anders said Jenkins was a former Mount Vernon resident. Once his identity was confirmed – his name was on the prescription bottles – police notified relatives and went to the Bronx to search his apartment.

Anders said no witnesses had been found but police would be questioning early commuters at the station on Thursday.

The handcuffs were sent to a lab for fingerprint tests.

Smith & Wesson cuffs are widely used by police departments but also are available to others. Several models are for sale online at the company Web site.

Because the death was on the tracks, police from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, rather than the Mount Vernon force, had jurisdiction, Anders said. The MTA runs the nation’s largest mass transit system, including Metro-North, the Long Island Rail Road and the New York City bus and subway systems.

Mount Vernon police Commissioner David Chong said that he did not know if the handcuffs found on the body were police issue and that as far as he knew there was no implication of police involvement in the man’s death.

AP-ES-10-01-08 1849EDT