(The following story by Peter Sanders appeared on the Wall Street Journal website on September 15.)
LOS ANGELES — Three days after a commuter train crash killed 25 people, the spokeswoman for rail agency Metrolink resigned after being criticized for public statements she made over the weekend indicating that the agency was responsible for the accident.
The move comes hours after Metrolink’s board held an emergency meeting, after which it tried to distance itself from spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell’s statements. In a statement after the meeting, the board characterized Ms. Tyrrell’s early statements concerning the crash as “premature” and agreed to defer to the National Transportation Safety Board, going forward.
Metrolink Board Chair Ron Roberts said Sunday that the agency’s board hadn’t authorized, or known beforehand, that Ms. Tyrrell would tell the media so soon after the crash that the Metrolink engineer had failed to heed a red-warning signal, which led to the fiery head-on collision between the commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train in Los Angeles’s Chatsworth neighborhood. The swift admission of responsibility and apparent cause also angered NTSB officials who had arrived at the crash scene barely an hour before and had just begun their own investigation.
Ms. Tyrell says that she resigned after Mr. Roberts called her announcement “premature” and he said that she “did not have authorization” to make the statement. Ms. Tyrell said that she had the authorization of David Solow, Metrolink’s chief executive, to take responsibility for the crash. Mr. Solow couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
“The statement was and is accurate,” Ms. Tyrell said in an email. “It was the right thing to do regardless of how ticked off it made the NTSB.”
At a Sunday evening briefing, the NTSB confirmed the Metrolink engineer ran through a red signal, which led to the collision. The engineer was killed in the accident. The safety agency is investigating reports that in the minutes before the crash, the engineer was exchanging text messages with a few teenage railroad enthusiasts nearby.