SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA: Spanish police said yesterday they have detained the driver of a speeding train that crashed in the nation’s deadliest rail disaster in decades, accusing him of criminal recklessness.
The country was in mourning over Wednesday’s horrific tragedy, which police said had killed 78 people including several foreigners and injured more than 100.
The 52-year-old driver faces criminal accusations including “recklessness” over the crash near the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela, said Jaime Iglesias, police chief in the northwestern Galicia region.
The train was said to have been travelling at more than twice the speed limit when it hurtled off the rails.
The grey-haired driver, who reportedly boasted of his love for speed online, was detained on Thursday in hospital where he had been under police surveillance, Iglesias told a news conference.
A Spanish judge had ordered police to question the man, identified as Francisco Jose Garzon Amo in local media which published photographs of him with blood covering the right side of his face.
He has not been charged with a crime and has yet to be quizzed by police about the tragedy because he is still being treated for unspecified injuries suffered in the crash.
“The driver still not gone to court to answer questions and no date has been fixed for his appearance before the judge,” a spokeswoman for Galicia’s High Court, which is leading the investigation said.
Spain’s leading El Pais newspaper said the driver of the train — which was carrying over 200 passengers and crew — had been unable to brake in time.
Seventy-eight passengers perished, five of whom have yet to be identified.
Five foreigners are among the dead — an American, an Algerian, a Mexican, a Brazilian and a Venezuelan, police said.
Santiago de Compostela city hall said a French national was believed to be among the dead but this has not been confirmed.
Most of the injured are Spanish but at least eight were foreigners from Argentina, Britain, Colombia, the US and Peru.
The number of people still in hospital dropped to 81, with 28 in critical condition, including three children, Galician Health Minister Rocio Mosquera said.
A dramatic 10-second video from a railway security camera appears to show the train rocketing around a curve, slamming into a concrete wall at the side of the track as the engine overturned.
Smoke billowed from the gutted cars as bodies were strewn across the tracks.
The driver, while still trapped in his cab, told railway officials by radio that the train had taken the curve at 190kmph, unidentified investigation sources told El Pais, more than double the 80 kph speed limit on that section of track.
“I was going at 190! I hope no one died because it will weigh on my conscience,” he was quoted as saying. He has been with state rail company Renfe for 30 years, including 13 years of experience as a driver.
Media reports described Garzon Amo, one of two drivers on the train, as a speed freak who once gleefully posted a picture on his Facebook page of a train speedometer at 200kmph. AFP
