From: democrats@fail.us

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PHILADELPHIA — On a day when rescue workers pulled an eighth
body from the wreckage of an Amtrak railcar, the revelation that
the train was going much too fast when it hurtled off the tracks
in Philadelphia has turned the attention of investigators onto
the 32-year-old engineer who was driving the train and why he
reacted too late to slow it down as he went into a curve.

The engineer, Brandon Bostian, “has absolutely no recollection
of the incident or anything unusual,” Robert Goggin, who was
identified as Mr. Bostian’s lawyer, said Wednesday on ABC News.
“The next thing he recalls is being thrown around, coming to,
finding his cellphone and dialing 911.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is studying the data
from the train’s “black box” recorder for clues to what
happened, but as questions mount about his role in the crash
Tuesday night that killed eight people and injured more than
200, Mr. Bostian, himself, may not be of much help in answering
them. Officials said during a news conference that the eighth
body was found by a cadaver-sniffing dog Thursday morning in the
first car, which remained at the crash site.

“All individuals who we believe were on that train have now been
accounted for,” Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia said
Thursday afternoon. The person found dead Thursday morning was
the last of those to be located.

Amtrak has said that there were 238 passengers and 5 crew
members aboard the train, and late Wednesday, officials had said
fewer than a dozen remained unaccounted for.

The safety board said the engineer triggered the emergency
brakes seconds before the wreck, with the train speeding at 106
miles an hour, but crucial questions about his actions, and
whether he was to blame for the excessive speed, remain
unanswered.

Mr. Goggin said his client, who had not taken drugs or alcohol,
suffered a head wound in the crash that required 14 stitches,
and a leg wound that was stapled, and turned his cellphone over
to the police; investigators in train crashes routinely look
into whether engineers are distracted by things like calling or
texting.

Mr. Bostian’s social media profiles describe him as being from
Memphis, a graduate of the University of Missouri who had joined
Amtrak as a conductor in 2006, and became an engineer in 2010.
He lives in a six-story brick apartment building in the Forest
Hills section of Queens, where neighbors described him as quiet
and polite. No one answered his apartment door.

Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia said the engineer was
interviewed by the Philadelphia police, but he has not spoken
with the safety board.

“We certainly want to be able to interview him as soon as he’s
available and ready — I mean mentally and physically,” said
Robert L. Sumwalt, the board member overseeing the
investigation. “You can imagine if you’d been injured pretty
badly in an accident, you may not have all of your faculties
available. We want to make sure when we do talk to him, that’s
he’s able to give us an accurate account of what he does
remember.”

The engineer is not required to talk to the board, he said, but
“We do find that in most cases the people involved in these
accidents do want to talk to us because they’re interested in
safety; they want to find out what happened to prevent it from
happening again.”

The black box data showed that Amtrak’s Northeast Regional Train
188, bound from Washington to New York, was going more than
double the speed limit of 50 m.p.h. on a sharp curve when it
derailed.

Mr. Sumwalt said that on Thursday, investigators will conduct a
3-D laser scan of the two remaining rail cars here at the
derailment site, allowing them to record the exact position of
the wreckage before removing it. He said they will also examine
video recorded by a front-facing camera on the train’s
locomotive, and conduct testing of the brake system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/15/us/philadelphia-amtrak-train-
crash.html?_r=0

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