PLAQUEMINE, La. (AP) — Dewitt Watts Sr. didn’t buy the bleak prognosis reported about a 15-year-old boy who’d lost a leg and foot in a mishap with a train.

The television newscaster suggested Darryl Becnel, of Plaquemine, would require a wheelchair for the rest of his life, Watts said. ‘‘I said to myself, ’I don’t think that’s the case.’’

Watts called fellow Shriner Fred Frederick and told him, ‘‘We need to go to Plaquemine.’’

The two men have been driving the van that takes area children to the Shriners Orthopedic Hospital in Shreveport for the past 15 years.

As mom Laura Becnel tells the story, Watts and Frederick started asking around town in search of the Becnel family.

At the Plaquemine Police Department, the Shriners got their answer.

Laura Becnel formerly worked as a home health nurse in the building next door to the department, so officers were able to tell the Shriners plenty about her and her adopted son Darryl.

A promising young Babe Ruth baseball player, Darryl Becnel had just pitched a no-hitter and was supposed to go back to the ballpark later that late July 2006 evening.

But, the boy and some friends were flirting with danger as they had so many times in the past by jumping onto a moving train along the tracks running near their homes.

Though he had slipped the last time he tried the feat, Darryl Becnel just shushed that little voice that said ‘‘see what can happen?’’ and tried it again anyway.

‘‘And look what happened?’’ he recalled recently. ‘‘I think maybe God was trying to tell me something.’’

When he slipped this time, the train ran over him and severed his right leg just below the knee and his left foot.

As terrible as the accident was, Darryl Becnel was lucky in that the train ran over him not once but twice. The second hit cauterized the wounds and prevented him from bleeding to death.

In shock and thinking he had merely hit his head on the tracks, Darryl Becnel tried to stand up only to fall down.

‘‘I felt my whole body vibrating, but I didn’t know what had happened,’’ he said.

When his brother showed up, summoned by friends, Darryl Becnel said he told him, ‘‘Uh-oh, I’m in trouble now!

‘‘I was in the ambulance, and I told them don’t call my mom cause she’s gonna whoop me,’’ he recalled.

Laura Becnel was at work at the VA Clinic in Baton Rouge when she got the news from her sister.

One of the doctors lay across the hood of the car to keep Laura Becnel there until someone could be found to drive her to the hospital in Plaquemine.

By the time they got there, though, they were about to take Darryl to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center via helicopter.

Afraid of heights, she was in a panic she’d have to ride in the helicopter with her son but figured she would summon the courage. That fear was relieved when the doctor told her only a nurse and paramedic could make the flight.

But other fears lay ahead for both mother and son.

Darryl Becnel was at OLOL for six weeks and underwent six different surgeries.

The day after the accident, medical staff removed his dressing and took him for a whirlpool treatment to clean the wounds.

‘‘He was hollering,’’ recalled Laura Becnel.

‘‘I told them to put me to sleep until the pain went away,’’ added Darryl Becnel, who three years later said he still has phantom pains. ‘‘It feels like my toes itch.’’

Laura Becnel’s co-workers at the VA as well as others around the nation donated their vacation time so she could stay with her son during his recovery. Her expertise as a nurse came in handy as she helped Darryl convalesce. It’s something she’s done for most of her son’s life.

‘‘Darryl’s a survivor,’’ said Laura Becnel, who came into Darryl’s life when he was 6 months old. ‘‘The first time I met him, he had a bottle in one hand and an IV in the other.

‘‘He cried all the time,’’ she said. ‘‘I’d just get so tired I’d say I was going to give him back. My husband would tell me, ’Laura, I’ll help you raise this baby as long as I’m alive, but don’t give him away; you’re going to need him.’’’

A few years after telling her that, Ronald Becnel died — about a year after he and Laura had buried their 27-year-old son, Craylon.

‘‘When my son died, it liked to have killed me,’’ Laura Becnel confessed. ‘‘Then Ronald — I thought I’d been through the wringer. But whatever cards you’re dealt you’ve got to play and play them well.’’

The daughter of a preacher, Laura Becnel’s faith sustains her.

‘‘You can’t make it through something like this without God.’’

She shares that faith with her son, who drives his mother to church on Sunday mornings. It’s something he can do thanks to the Shriners.

When Watts found the Becnels, he gave them the phone number to the Shriners hospital. Like so many Shriners patients from the Baton Rouge area, the Becnels could get an appointment but had no way to get there.

This is where Watts and Frederick and their van come into play. They typically make the three-hour-plus drive two to three times a month, driving patients and parents up in the morning and back home that same evening.

‘‘I told her, ’We’re going to roll him in, but he’s going to walk out,’’’ Watts said.

In February 2007 when Darryl got his prosthetic leg and foot and walked out of the hospital, Watts reminded Laura Becnel of the prediction.

‘‘That’s the joy — seeing the kids get back to normal,’’ Watts said.

‘‘I can’t say enough about the Shriners,’’ she said. ‘‘They do everything like clockwork; they have it down pat. They have treated us so nice. I’m grateful for the drives up there and so thankful for that support. Mr. Fred and Mr. Dewitt have the patience of Job.’’

After Darryl was fitted with his first pair of prostheses, Laura Becnel took him to Baton Rouge Rehabilitation Hospital to learn to walk without crutches.

The call to pick him back up came much sooner than expected. What should have been a two- to three-week process had only taken a few days.

‘‘The doctors said it was like he’d done this before,’’ she said.

Laura Becnel treats Darryl like she did before the accident — refusing to coddle him. He has had such chores as doing the dishes, vacuuming and dusting since he came home from the hospital. When he complains he has no feet, she reminds him he still has hands.

‘‘I always tell him it could be worse,’’ she said, laughing. ‘‘If he’d be sad, I’d be sad, but he’s laughing all the time. When you look at him and he’s happy, it makes it easier.’’

After the accident, Darryl Becnel’s biggest fear was that he wouldn’t have friends anymore, but life hasn’t turned out that way.

Darryl Becnel got a bicycle to ride with his friends, and while his sports days are over, he shows his school spirit by marching in the Plaquemine High School Band.

Being in the band has also kept him connected with Watts, since the high school band and the Shriners often march in the same parades.

‘‘Usually, we lose track of them,’’ Watts said of the patients he drives.

Watts and Frederick drove the Becnels to Shreveport for the last time Feb. 2. Shriners Orthopedic Hospital treats patients until age 18, and Darryl Becnel, a strapping young man who now stands taller than 6 feet, got his second leg and third foot on that trip — just days before his 18th birthday on Feb. 15.

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Information from: The Advocate, http://www.2theadvocate.com