(The Associated Press circulated the following by Linda Deutsch on May 28.)
LOS ANGELES, Ca. – A man who admitted causing a commuter train disaster that killed 11 people apologized at his murder trial Tuesday, saying he was trying to kill himself and never meant to harm anyone else on a day that began with him happily watering roses and then sudden thoughts of suicide.
Taking the witness stand, Juan Alvarez, 29, asked for forgiveness from families of those killed in the January 2005 disaster involving two Metrolink trains. Some relatives of the dead were present as Alvarez testified.
Alvarez said he poured gas over himself and his Jeep, took out a lighter and then decided he did not want to burn himself to death because it would be too painful. He said he then drove onto railroad tracks, hoping a train would smash into his vehicle and kill him quickly.
“I feel terrible and I ask for forgiveness,” said Alvarez. “I know some of the family members are here today. I’m very sorry for what happened. I never meant to hurt any of your loved ones. That could have been my mom or dad.”
Alvarez is charged with 11 murders and arson. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
Alvarez said that after his decision not to kill himself he could not get his SUV off the tracks.
“I tried to wave at the train but I wasn’t expecting the train to see me” he said. “I went back in the car and I was pressing the gas and moving the steering wheel from side to side and jumping on the seat.
“I see the light. It was very bright and I jump from the car and that’s when the train impacted the car. I guess I just threw myself out of the car.”
A Los Angeles-bound Metrolink train rammed Alvarez’s empty Jeep setting off a chain-reaction in Glendale, just northeast of Los Angles. The derailed train struck a parked freight train and then was struck by another Metrolink train going the other way. About 180 people were injured.
Alvarez, speaking in a calm monotone, told jurors he had awakened that day in a good mood.
“I was happy,” he said. “Things were starting to look good for me to get my kids back.”
Alvarez, an acknowledged drug addict, said he was awaiting a drug test, had just moved into a new place and had a car and a lead on a stable job.
Asked by his attorney, Thomas Kielty, what he did that morning, he said, “I watered the roses.”
But then he said he got into his Jeep and decided to commit suicide.
“What made you think about that?” asked Kielty.
“I don’t know,” said Alvarez. “I guess I just snapped.”
He said he began imagining that his wife was in the back of his car with her new boyfriend.
“They were saying, ‘Look at how stupid he is. He can’t see us.’ I thought I was going a little crazy. My family was trying to put me in a mental home.”
He added, “Then I began thinking I’ll never get the kids, nothing good is going to happen anymore. I had financial problems.”
He said he pulled into a gas station and filled a few gallon water jugs with gasoline, drove around looking for a dark place to kill himself, stopped in an alley and poured gasoline over his head and body, then poured more on the hood and interior of the Jeep.
“I got inside and closed the windows,” he said, adding that he then began to feel sick from the gasoline fumes and “I was itching all over my back.”
He said he had a lighter in his hand and was about to set fire to himself when he had second thoughts.
“I started thinking it was a bad idea to burn myself. It was going to be very, very painful.”
“Did you decide not to do it?” asked Kielty.
“Not to do it that way,” Alvarez responded. “…I looked around and then I see the tracks and it came to my mind it would be the fastest way for someone to die.”
He said he remembered a relative had died when his truck was hit by a train in Mexico and no one else had been hurt in the crash.
He said he backed his Jeep onto the tracks and waited for the train.
While sitting there, he said, he was looking at photos on the dashboard.
“I just thought this is pretty crazy, this whole suicide idea,” he said.
Under Kielty’s questioning, Alvarez said several times that he did not think anyone else would be hurt and had no idea that the train could derail.
Kielty has portrayed Alvarez as a deeply troubled man who had tried suicide before, beginning when he was 8 years old.
Alvarez said that he once lay down in a road waiting for a car to run him over and twice stabbed himself. He said he was reacting to abuse at home where his father, a boxer, beat him and his mother. He said his family tried to have him committed to a mental hospital before the train disaster.
Deputy District Attorney Cathryn Brougham said in opening statements last month that Alvarez had threatened to kill his wife and staged the accident to get her attention. She said he succeeded because after he was jailed on murder charges his wife withdrew a restraining order and visited him regularly.