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Federal investigators in the California train collision that
killed 25 passengers and injured 130 more last week are trying to obtain phone records that could help them establish the cause of the terrible accident.
According to the most recent reports, one minute before the collision,
the engineer responsible for the crash sent a text message from his cell phone,
apparently just one of several messages that had been exchanged between him and
two teenagers before the disaster.
The National Transportation Safety Board has reportedly
contacted the two 14-year-old boys, who’ve admitted exchanging text messages
with the train engineer. Although the name of the engineer has not been made
public, he is believed to be responsible for the accident, which resulted in 25
fatalities, including him.
Kitty Higgins, member of the National Transportation Safety
Board, said train operators are not allowed to use cell phones while on duty. Unfortunately,
the investigators are taking small steps towards establishing the details of
the accident, due to the fact that they have not been able to recover the
engineer’s cell phone from the crash site.
However, the preliminary investigation revealed that the
train engineer ignored the red signal that indicated the approach of another train,
which makes him responsible for the collision. According to NTSB, a dispatcher
tried to warn the engineer about the imminent collision, however it was too
late.
The investigators are hoping that once they’ll obtain the
engineer’s phone records and cell phone, they will be able to learn more about
what happened, Furthermore, they said they are looking into multiple factors
that might have caused the collision, in addition to the engineer’s lack of
responsibility at the time.
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