Calif. rail agency: Engineer's error caused LA train wreck

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A commuter train engineer who ran a stop signal was blamed Saturday for the country's deadliest rail disaster in 15 years, a wreck that killed 24 people and left such a mass of smoldering, twisted metal that it took nearly a day to recover all the bodies. A preliminary investigation found that "it was a Metrolink engineer that failed to stop at a red signal and that was the probable cause" of Friday's collision with a freight train in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell said. She said she believes the engineer, whose name was not released, is dead. "When two trains are in the same place at the same time somebody's made a terrible mistake," said Tyrrell, who was shaking and near tears as she spoke with reporters. Authorities later announced that the effort to recover bodies from the Metrolink train's crushed front car had ended, with the death toll at 24. "It was a very, very difficult operation," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. "It was like peeling an onion to find all the victims there."