(The following story by Caitlin Liu appeared on the Los Angeles Times website on May 5.)
LOS ANGELES — A judge today ordered Juan Manuel Alvarez to stand trial for the deaths of 11 people who perished after a Metrolink commuter train struck Alvarez’s Jeep in what he claimed was a suicide attempt.
Prosecutors presented enough evidence during the three-day preliminary hearing at the criminal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles to justify the charges.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders announced his decision this morning as survivors of the victims listened.
Alvarez, who did not testify, has said he didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and his defense lawyers have maintained that he suffered from a previously undiagnosed mental disability.
The deadly wreck on Jan. 26 at the border of Glendale and Los Angeles also injured 180 people in two commuter trains.
The chain-reaction crash began when a southbound Metrolink train struck Alvarez’s vehicle and derailed, hit a freight train and then smashed into a northbound Metrolink train.
It was the deadliest passenger rail accident in the United States since 1999.
If the 26-year-old construction worker is found guilty of intentionally causing the crash, he could face the death penalty if prosecutors decide to seek it.
Establishing what happened before the train wreck could shed light on Alvarez’s intentions before the disaster.
His lawyer, Eric Chase, has said whether his client is convicted of first-degree murder or lesser manslaughter charges “depends on what was in his head.”
In an earlier interview, Alvarez’s family members said he had a history of mental illness and suicidal behavior.
Authorities say Alvarez was trying to fake an attempted suicide, possibly to gain sympathy from his estranged wife.
A witness who testified Wednesday, Douglas Ross, a sanitation worker for the city of Glendale, said that he saw a man in a gray poncho emerge from a vehicle — resembling a truck with a camper shell — near the Chevy Chase Drive rail crossing in Glendale shortly before the January disaster. The man liberally doused the vehicle with liquid before getting back in and driving toward the tracks.
“He was running around the truck shaking the bottle on the truck…. He started on the roof, then went to the [hood], then went around to the other side,” Ross said, under questioning by Deputy Dist. Atty. Alan Jackson.
According to police, the poncho-wearing man was Alvarez, and the liquid he splashed over his Jeep Grand Cherokee was gasoline.
On the witness stand, Metrolink engineers recalled the horrors of the crash.
One passenger, a regular on train No. 100, had eyes “as big as softballs” as the train hurtled toward the Jeep, engineer Bruce Gray recalled. That passenger, Scott McKeown, died in the crash.
Charles Wright, engineer for the northbound train No. 901, called Jan. 26 “the worst day in my whole career.”
Wright repeatedly telephoned for paramedics because he was in shock and couldn’t hear the sirens arriving, he said.
(Times staff writer John Spano contributed to this report.)