(Reuters circulated the following article on January 27.)
LOS ANGELES — A suicidal California man could face the death penalty for triggering a rail crash that killed 11 people, authorities said on Thursday, and they described a possible copycat attempt by another depressed driver.
Police said Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, who has a history of mental, family and drug problems, slashed his wrists and stabbed himself in the chest shortly before parking his sport-utility vehicle on rail tracks on Wednesday.
He jumped clear at the last moment but one commuter train hit his car and derailed into the path of another train. Almost 200 people were injured in the collision north of Los Angeles.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said 11 counts of murder had been filed against Alvarez, including a “special circumstances” allegation that meant prosecutors could decide to seek the death penalty if he is convicted.
In what they described as a similar incident, police said they had arrested another 25 year-old man who parked his car at dawn on Thursday diagonally across rail tracks in Irvine, 30 miles south of Los Angeles, with the intention of killing himself.
Police were alerted and approached the driver, who pulled away and led officers on a car chase before being persuaded to get out of his vehicle.
Police said the man, named as Tigran Kashkarian, told them he had planned on committing suicide by being struck by a train. He is being held in jail pending mental-health investigations.
Alvarez was not injured in Wednesday’s crash and was under suicide watch in the jail ward of a local hospital. His arraignment was postponed until Friday because of his medical condition, his lawyer said.
District Attorney Cooley said the facts in the Alvarez case were “pretty self-evident.”
“He certainly intended to commit the act of train derailment. And under California law, committing that act alone, whether one intended to kill anyone on the train or not, can lead to murder charges,” Cooley said.
MULTIPLE DEATHS
The “special circumstances” that could lead to a death-penalty request consisted of the multiple deaths and the fact they were cause by a train derailment.
Metrolink, the Southern California commuter rail service that operates the train tracks, said it was the worst accident in its 13-year history.
Relatives described Alvarez as a handyman who separated from his wife Carmelita about three months ago. According to court records, his wife had taken out a restraining order claiming he was on drugs and had threatened to abduct their three-year-old son.
“He was having problems with drugs and all that and was violent, and because of that he separated from her,” Alvarez’s sister-in-law Maricela Amaya told Spanish-language television broadcaster Telemundo.
“A few other times he went around as if he wanted to kill himself. I said if you’re going to kill yourself, go kill yourself far away,” Amaya said.
Police said they test to determine whether Alvarez had drugs in his system at the time of Wednesday’s crash.
Railroad workers started removing the twisted wreckage on Thursday after authorities said all passengers on the two trains had been accounted for.