A pickup truck driver under investigation in Tuesday's Metrolink crash in Oxnard will be in court Thursday. He was booked on suspicion of felony hit-and-run in the collision that injured 28 people, four of them critically.
Early reports suggested that Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez's truck got stuck at a crossing before Tuesday's crash, but a National Transportation Safety Board member said it appeared that the driver had been traveling down the tracks just before the collision.
"It was not stuck, it was not bottomed out on the track or something like that," Robert Sumwalt, the NTSB member, told reporters Tuesday night.
Several hours earlier, Oxnard police had said Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, of Yuma, Ariz., was attempting to turn his 2005 Ford F-450 onto 5th Street when he instead pulled onto the railroad tracks and became stuck. The truck was pulling a trailer carrying equipment including welding tools.
The five-car Metrolink train was bound for downtown Los Angeles when it derailed at 5:42 a.m. There were no fatalities, but 28 of the 50 people involved were taken to hospitals with minor to critical injuries.
Police said they found Sanchez-Ramirez about a mile and a half from the crash scene and arrested him on suspicion of felony hit-and-run involving multiple injuries.
Authorities said they were still trying to figure out why he was on the tracks.
Sanchez-Ramirez is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail.
The collision occurred about 80 feet west of the grade crossing where vehicles pass over the tracks, Sumwalt said, suggesting that the truck driver had driven his vehicle along some length of the tracks.
"We're very concerned about that; we're very interested in it," Sumwalt said.
The impact of the crash sent the truck across the grade crossing, pushing it about 300 feet.
The train was traveling at 79 mph when the engineer saw the truck on the tracks at 5th Street and Rice Avenue, authorities said. He pulled the emergency brake seconds before the collision, they said.
The crash sent three of the Metrolink train's cars spilling onto the nearby gravel and the adjacent street. At least four people were critically injured, including the engineer, officials said.
In recent years, Metrolink has replaced almost its entire fleet of passenger cars with Rotem coaches, considered the state of the art in safety. The cars have crush zones, breakaway tables, improved emergency exits and seating arrangements that can reduce the risk of passengers being thrown into fixtures or each other in an accident.
The new passenger cars performed well in Tuesday's crash, officials said.
"The injuries came from people being tossed around," said Keith Millhouse, mayor pro tem of Moorpark in Ventura County and a Metrolink board member. "The Rotem cars received very minor damage. They performed the way they should in terms of collision absorption. This could have been tremendously worse without them."
Tuesday's crash, however, is the fourth accident involving Metrolink trains that were pushed by locomotives from behind and controlled from the front by a lighter cab car, a passenger coach with an engineer's station.
The practice, which is commonly used by commuter railroads, has been controversial. Some safety experts say that heavier locomotives might have a lower risk of derailment in crashes with motor vehicles on the tracks.
For breaking news in California, follow @Laura_Nelson, @MattHjourno, and @CMaiDuc
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times7:03 a.m.: This post has been updated with information on truck driver's court date.
This post was originally published at 6:24 a.m.
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