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Report Says Train Engineer May Have Been Text Messaging

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The Associated Press

Published: September 15, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Federal officials investigating a commuter rail collision that killed 25 people said Sunday that they were looking into a report that an engineer blamed for running a stop signal before the crash may have been text messaging around the same time.

The Metrolink commuter train slammed into an oncoming Union Pacific freight engine on the same track at 40 mph, killing 25 people, including the Metrolink engineer, and injuring 135 in the nation's deadliest rail accident in 15 years.

Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell had said the commuter train's engineer was at fault because he failed to stop at a red light on the tracks, but National Transportation Safety Board members cautioned that they had not completed their investigation.

Two days after the crash, men wearing green and orange safety vests walked up and down the tracks Sunday in an early morning fog, while others snapped pictures and climbed inside the wrecked shell of the front passenger car.

A teenager told CBS2-TV that he had exchanged a brief text message with the engineer shortly before the crash. The Los Angeles station said the teen was among a group of youths who befriended the engineer and asked him questions about his work. The station showed an interview of the teen holding a cell phone with a text message apparently signed by the engineer and dated 4:22 p.m. Friday, shortly before the crash.

Tyrrell said before the report aired that she would find it "unbelievable" that an engineer would be text messaging while operating a train.

Marc Eckstein, medical director for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said survivors' injuries included partially severed limbs and legs flayed to the bone. At least two survivors had to be extricated from underneath dead bodies and six victims were discovered under the train Saturday, he said.
Rescue crews recovered two data recorders Saturday from the Metrolink train and one data recorder and one video recorder from the freight train. The video has pictures from forward-looking cameras and the data recorders have information on speed, braking patterns and whether the horn was used.

At a news conference late Saturday, the NTSB's Kitty Higgins said it was too early to determine what caused the crash but noted that a pair of switches that control whether a train goes onto the siding were open. One of them should have been closed, Higgins said.

"The indication is that it was forced open," possibly by the Metrolink train, Higgins said.

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