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US train conductor text messaging before fatal crash: lawyer
2009-01-06
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The train conductor blamed for a crash that killed 24 people in Los Angeles in September was reported to his French employers for text messaging while at work, making the company liable, a lawyer for the victims said Tuesday. Edward Pfiester said a fellow co-worker had alerted his superiors to Robert Sanchez's habit of sending text messages on his mobile phone while at the controls of his Metrolink train, in violation of safety rules. Despite the warning, Pfiester added, the Connex subsidiary of France's Veolia Transport company took no action, making it liable along with Sanchez for the 24 deaths in the September 12 accident. The collision between the Metrolink passenger train and a freight train in Chatsworth, north of Los Angeles, also injured 134 people and was the worst train accident in the United States in some 15 years. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) blamed the accident on human error as Sanchez missed a stop signal while text messaging seconds before the crash. "We believe, and common sense indicates, that if you have somebody texting all the time; you've busted him a few months before; within two weeks of the date of the accident a fellow employee calls management and says, 'Hey guys, you've got to do something about this, everybody's at risk, something's going to happen,' that that is a factual manifestation of conscious disregard of the safety of the passengers," the lawyer said. He did not identify the Connex employee who reported Sanchez. The mother of one of the people killed in the crash and three of the injured filed lawsuits last month against Veolia, demanding an unspecified sum for damages. The NTSB is expected to take up to a year to complete its report on the accident. A Veolia Transport spokeswoman did not immediately return AFP calls for comment on the matter.
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