The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been summoned to inspect whether there was a chance that the windshield of Amtrak train No. 188 was struck by an object moments before derailing from the nation's busiest track this week in Philadelphia.
The incident killed eight people and wounded nearly 200 more. The FBI is set to study what remains of the Amtrak locomotive's shattered windshield, plus a circular damage outline.
The latest update on the National Transportation Safety Board probe revealed at a news conference on Friday night only raised more questions about the fatal accident, with the initial focus on why the train accelerated to two times the speed maximum from 70 mph to over 100 mph in the minute when it was expected to reduce speed to around 50 mph, before going onto the bent track segment on its path from Washington toward New York.
NTSB member Robert Sumwalt declined to make a guess about the precise implication of a projectile, but the idea raised the likelihood that the train engineer might have been preoccupied, panicked or even injured in the moments before the train left the rails.
A 39 year-old female assistant conductor informed NTSB investigators on Friday that the train's operation that day had been normal until a few minutes after getting out of Philadelphia's 30th Street station, the final stopover prior to the fatal incident, according to Sumwalt.
During that time, she overheard the radio conversation of Brandon Bostian, the 32-year-old engineer, with another driver from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The other driver had informed a train dispatcher that his windshield had been damaged by a projectile that he supposed was either from a gun fired or object hurled at his train and that he had to perform an emergency stop as a result. She recalled that Bostian then answered that he thought his own Amtrak train had been hit as well, according to the account of the assistant conductor, Sumwalt said.
Sumwalt's team had found no evidence validating the story solely based on the recollection of the conductor, who Sumwalt noted had gone through "a very traumatic experience."
For his part, train engineer Bostian could not remember any projectiles before the crash when asked about the radio conversation heard by the assistant conductor, according to Sumwalt.
The NTSB has requested the FBI's assistance to examine the ruined locomotive's windshield, in an effort to learn how and when the damage was done.
Photo: National Transportation Safety Board | Flickr
