(The following article by Caitlin Liu was posted on the Los Angeles Times website on May 3. Bruce Gray and Charles Wright are members of BLET Division 20 in Los Angeles. )
LOS ANGELES — Two Metrolink engineers this morning recalled the horror of a predawn chain reaction crash on the border of Los Angeles in January that derailed two commuter trains, killing 11 and injuring more than 180.
Bruce Gray, engineer for the southbound Train 100 on Jan. 26, testified in Los Angeles County Superior Court that things appeared normal as his Metrolink train hurtled through the predawn darkness toward Union Station when his headlights glinted off something ahead.
He saw a vehicle straddling the tracks, not moving and with its headlights off. Gray said that he pulled the emergency brakes but couldn’t stop in time, and his train hit the vehicle and derailed off to the right.
He then saw a freight train and the headlights of an approaching northbound Metrolink train on the adjacent tracks ahead.
“We were going to hit one of those trains,” Gray testified. “I knew we were in trouble at that point.”
One passenger, a regular on Train 100, had eyes “as big as softballs,” Gray said. That passenger, Scott McKeown, later died in the crash.
The chilling testimony came this morning during the first day of a hearing for Juan Manuel Alvarez, who allegedly stopped his car on the railroad tracks and set it on fire. The hearing will determine whether Alvarez, 25, will stand trial for murder in the crash.
The engineer for the northbound Train 902, Charles Wright, called Jan. 26 “the worst day in my whole career.” After the wreck, Wright kept calling the dispatch center to send for paramedics because he couldn’t hear any sirens.
Wright — a train engineer for 25 years — testified that he learned later that he couldn’t hear the sirens because he was in shock.
Prosecutors say that the construction worker told police he parked his Jeep Grand Cherokee on the tracks on the Glendale-Los Angeles border, hoping that a train would kill him, but ran away when he changed his mind. But prosecutors are expected to present evidence from eyewitnesses that under mines Alvarez’s suicide claim.
Alvarez could face the death penalty if a judge orders him to stand trial.
His defense has portrayed Alvarez as suffering from undiagnosed depression that led to hallucinations, brutality against his family, drug abuse and attempts at suicide.
Although Alvarez has admitted driving onto the tracks and leaving his vehicle behind, his defense has insisted that the question is to what extent he is responsible and therefore culpable.
The defense, which is not required to present a case at the preliminary hearing, has suggested that Alvarez’s previously undiagnosed mental illness is schizophrenia.
“This case is going to be about whether we’re a society dedicated to vengeance or a society dedicated to justice,” his lawyer, Eric Chase, said in an earlier interview with The Times. “What will be the justice for Juan Alvarez?”