SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA: The driver of a train that hurtled off the rails killing 78 people in Spain faced possible charges of “reckless homicide” as doctors worked on Saturday to identify the last three victims of the country’s worst rail disaster in decades.
As Spain mourned, the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela where the crash occurred prepared a memorial service for the victims Monday in its cathedral, a destination for Catholic pilgrims from around the world.
Police detained the driver of the train — who reportedly boasted of his love for speed online — on Thursday “for the alleged crimes of reckless homicide,” Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters Saturday during a visit to the city.
The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, 52, refused to answer police questions Friday in his hospital bed and the case was passed to the courts.
He was discharged from hospital on Saturday and taken to a police station and will appear before a judge on Sunday, the minister said.
“There are reasonable grounds to consider that he may have been responsible for what happened, which must be established by a judge and the investigation which has been opened,” Fernandez Diaz said.
Under Spanish law, a suspect can be detained for a maximum of 72 hours before being heard by a judge.
The train was said to have been traveling at more than twice the speed limit on a curve when it hurtled off the rails and slammed into a concrete wall, with one carriage leaping up onto a siding.
Smoke billowed from the gutted cars as bodies were strewn across the tracks about four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the station at Santiago de Compostela. Locals said they came running from their houses to drag passengers from the wreckage.
Spanish media published photographs of the man they identified as Garzon Amo after the crash, with blood covering the right side of his face.
He reportedly required stitches for head injuries.
The driver should have started slowing the train before reaching a bend that train drivers had been told to respect, the president of Spanish rail network administrator ADIF said.
“Four kilometers before the accident happened he already had warnings that he had to begin slowing his speed,” Gonzalo Ferre told Spanish public television TVE.
Seventy-eight passengers perished, three of whom have yet to be identified, and 178 were injured, regional authorities said.
“We are checking DNA data to identify in the coming hours the victims that have yet to be identified,” said the head of the Galicia regional government, Alberto Nunez Feijoo.
At least seven foreigners are among the dead — a US citizen, an Algerian, a Mexican, a Brazilian, a Venezuelan, an Italian and a national of the Dominican Republic, a judicial source said.
Most of the injured are Spanish but at least eight were foreigners from Argentina, Britain, Colombia, the United States and Peru.
Seventy-one people remained in hospital, including 28 adults and three children who were in critical condition.
The driver, while still trapped in his cab, told railway officials by radio that the train had taken the curve at 190 kilometers (118 miles) an hour, more than double the 80 kph speed limit on that section of track, El Pais said, citing unidentified sources in the investigation.
“I was going at 190! I hope no one died because it will weigh on my conscience,” he was quoted as saying.
State railway company Renfe said the driver had been with the firm for 30 years, including 13 years as a driver.
He had driven trains past the spot of the accident 60 times during his time with Renfe, company president Julio Gomez-Pomar told private television Antena 3.
“That is to say, the knowledge that he has to have of this track is exhaustive,” he said.
Media reports described Garzon Amo as a speed freak who once posted a picture on his Facebook page of a train speedometer at 200 kph.
A caption read: “I am on the edge, I can’t go faster or else I will be fined.”
The page has since been taken down.
Renfe said the train — a model able to adapt between high-speed and normal tracks — had no technical problems and had just passed an inspection on the morning of the accident.
Experts have raised questions about the track’s speed signalling system.
Since high-speed trains use the route, it has been equipped with an automatic speed control system known as the European Rail Traffic Management System, under which a train’s brakes can be automatically applied if speeding.
But the secretary general of Spain’s train drivers’ union, Juan Jesus Garcia Fraile, told public radio that the system was not in place at the crash site.
It was Spain’s deadliest rail accident since 1944 when hundreds were killed in a train collision, also between Madrid and Galicia. In 1972, 77 people died when a train derailed between Cadiz and Seville.
Many of the passengers in Wednesday’s crash were said to be on their way to a festival in honor of Saint James, the apostle who gave his name to Santiago de Compostela.
Spain train driver faces ‘reckless homicide’ charges
