Inspectors look for details in commuter train wreck

LOS ANGELES -- Federal officials investigating a commuter rail collision that killed 25 people said Sunday 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.

Eleven NTSB investigators were working on the accident, said agency spokesman Terry Williams.

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.

Williams said he couldn't confirm reports that the engineer, whose name was not released, had been text messaging.

"We're going to look into that, anything that can help us find the cause of this accident," 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.

Families of victims struggled with their loss after the coroner's office released a partial list of the names of the dead. Among them was a Los Angeles police officer and a city employee who was believed to work in the general services office, said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Spree Desha, 35, had worked for the Police Department for seven years and spent much of her career training new officers. She had been honored 34 times for performance and professional qualities.

"She sat in the first train (car) as a matter of practice, in uniform, so if someone came on the train and made trouble, she was ready to help out," Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said. "That was just the way she did business."

Larry Remata, 58, said he was in Hawaii visiting his 100-year-old mother and rushed home when he got news that his wife, Donna, was among the dead.

"Right now, I am grieving. It is starting to hit me a little bit. Especially seeing her name in the newspaper -- it hurt me more," he said.

There were no new reports of fatalities from hospitals Sunday, and the scene was cleared of bodies, said Lt. Cheryl MacWillie of the county coroner's office.

The collision occurred on a horseshoe-shaped section of track in Chatsworth at the west end of the San Fernando Valley, near a 500-foot-long tunnel underneath Stoney Point Park. There is a siding at one end of the tunnel where one train can wait for another to pass, Tyrrell said.

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.

The commuter train, heading from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to Ventura County, was carrying 220 passengers, one engineer and one conductor when it collided with the Union Pacific freight, which had a crew of three. The impact rammed the Metrolink engine backward, jamming it deep into the first passenger car.

It was the deadliest passenger train crash since Sept. 22, 1993, when Amtrak's Sunset Limited plunged off a trestle into a bayou near Mobile, Ala., moments after the trestle was damaged by a towboat; 47 people were killed.