Train in Philadelphia wreck was speeding at 106 mph ADVERTISING Train in Philadelphia wreck was speeding at 106 mph PHILADELPHIA — The Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people, was hurtling at 106 mph before it
Train in Philadelphia wreck was speeding at 106 mph
PHILADELPHIA — The Amtrak train that crashed in Philadelphia, killing at least seven people, was hurtling at 106 mph before it ran off the rails along a sharp curve where the speed limit drops to just 50 mph, federal investigators said Wednesday.
The engineer applied the emergency brakes moments before the crash but managed to slow the train to only 102 mph by the time the locomotive’s black box stopped recording data, said Robert Sumwalt of the National Transportation Safety Board. The speed limit just before the bend is 80 mph, he said.
The engineer, whose name was not released, refused to give a statement to law enforcement and left a police precinct with a lawyer, police said. Sumwalt said federal accident investigators want to talk to him but will give him a day or two to recover from the shock of the accident.
More than 200 people aboard the Washington-to-New York train were injured in the wreck, which happened in a decayed industrial neighborhood not far from the Delaware River just before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Passengers crawled out the windows of the torn and toppled rail cars in the darkness and emerged dazed and bloody, many of them with broken bones and burns.
Siege at Kabul guesthouse ends with 5 dead
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gunmen stormed a guesthouse in the Afghan capital as it hosted a party for foreigners, and authorities said five people, including an American, were killed during an hourslong siege that ended early Thursday morning. Six people were wounded and 54 hostages rescued.
Kabul Chief of Police Abdul Rahman said the attack began at 8:30 p.m. local time Wednesday, when gunmen opened fire at the restaurant of the Park Palace Hotel. He had no breakdown on the nationalities of the victims, but a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said an American was among the dead.
Throughout the standoff, sporadic gunfire echoed around the guesthouse in a central neighborhood that is home to United Nations compounds and a foreign-run hospital. At one point two explosions could be heard and four ambulances later arrived to the scene.
By wire sources
