Amtrak crash victims being identified as driver named

Lawyer tells TV network that Brandon Bostian, 32, cannot remember moment of derailment in which seven people died and more than 200 were injured

Workers look at one of the carriages of the derailed Amtrak train, which crashed just outside Philadelphia. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media

Investigators have continued to pore over the scene of the deadly Amtrak derailment outside Philadelphia, with the names of those killed beginning to emerge and concerns that more victims might yet remain undiscovered.
The train – which investigators confirmed was going faster than 100mph in a 50mph zone just prior to derailing – carried 238 passengers and five crew members. In addition to the seven confirmed dead in the crash on Tuesday night, more than 200 were injured.
The speed limit on the curve where the train crashed is 50mph. Michael Nutter, the Philadelphia mayor, said the train’s apparent 106mph speed as it approached was “just insane” and “astounding, devastating”.
On Wednesday night the driver was named in media reports as Brandon Bostian, said to be aged 32. The Reuters news agency, quoting a city official on condition of anonymity, described Bostian as a University of Missouri graduate with a business degree who had been an Amtrak engineer for more than four years and a conductor prior to that. The engineer was among those hurt in the wreck.
ABC News reported Bostian’s lawyer as saying his client had no memory of the crash itself and “no explanation” for what happened, but was co-operating with authorities and had voluntarily turned over a blood sample and his cellphone.
Bostian recalled driving the train to the area of the crash generally, then later getting tossed around, regaining consciousness and finding his bag and cellphone before dialing 911, the lawyer told the network.
ABC quoted the attorney as saying Bostian had “no health issues to speak of” before the wreck and was not on any medications. The engineer sustained a concussion and a gash to his head that required 14 staples, the lawyer told ABC. Bostian was treated for his injuries at Einstein Medical Center and released, a hospital spokesman said.
NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said investigators planned to interview the engineer after a day or two, once he had had time for convalesce.
Sumwalt said data from the “black box” recorder would be analyzed, along with video footage from forward-facing cameras attached to the train, as well as myriad other aspects including the condition of the tracks and signaling equipment, and the training and performance of the five-person crew.
The crash seemed likely to heighten moves to expand a system known as positive train control, or PTC, designed to prevent high-speed derailments. No such system was in effect at the site of the Amtrak crash, officials said.
“We feel that had such a system been installed in this section of track, this accident would not have occurred,” Sumwalt said.
Positive train control automatically slows or even halts trains moving too fast or heading into a danger zone. Under current law the rail industry must adopt the technology by year-end.

‘A lot of folks got banged up’

The city should have been a pass-through for most passengers aboard the Amtrak Northeast Regional Service train 188 between Washington DC and New York city.
Yet the trip, made by about 22 Amtrak trains on a normal day, ended up sending 136 patients to hospitals in the region, including dozens to Temple University hospital, where Dr Herbert E Cushing is chief medical officer.
“There are a lot of folks that got banged up when they rattled around,” Cushing said of patients tossed inside train cars who came to Temple, a level one trauma centre.
Late on Wednesday 23 patients in mostly stable condition remained at Temple. Eight patients were in critical condition, three awaited surgeries that evening and most had left the hospital after treatment. Two patients were sent home on Wednesday morning.
The scant “good news” in the aftermath of the crash was the relative lack of head injuries, according to Cushing.
As of Wednesday afternoon the hospital was only beginning to restabilise from the deadly derailment. The crush of ambulances carrying train crash victims had ended hours earlier.
Most media moved from one press conference to the next in swarms, while some reporters remained stationed near the wreckage.
Outside the hospital a worker told the Guardian she was “proud of her team,” but declined to identify herself as she was not authorised to speak to media.
Most hospital workers, who ate lunch or smoked outside the hospital, avoided journalists.
Many of the patients at Temple University were not from Philadelphia, and some had even come from outside the US. Patients from Albania, Belgium, Germany, India and Spain were brought to Temple, Cushing said.
Four Amtrak officials were stationed at the hospital to help victims from outside Philadelphia figure out a way to get home.
One patient, suffering massive chest injuries from the crash, died at the hospital. James Marshall Gaines III, a 48-year-old from Princeton, New Jersey, is one passenger who has been named. Authorities worked through the day to notify families of victims.
Gaines, a father-of-two who worked for the Associated Press, was returning home after attending meetings in Washington. He is survived by his 16-year-old son, Oliver, and daughter, Anushka, 11.
Gaines joined the AP in 1998 and was a key factor in nearly all of the news agency’s video initiatives, including a service providing live video to hundreds of clients worldwide.
Gaines won AP’s “Geek of the Month” award in May 2012 for his “tireless dedication and contagious passion” for technological innovation. He was part of a team that won the AP Chairman’s Prize in 2006 for developing the agency’s online video network.
Also identified was 20-year-old US Naval Academy midshipman Justin Zemser.
Zemser, an only child, was on leave from Annapolis, Maryland, and was on his way home to Rockaway Beach, New York, when the train derailed.
While attending Channel View High School, Zemser was elected student government president, a two-time letter winner on the school’s football team and his class valedictorian.
“He was a loving son, nephew and cousin, who was very community minded,” his parents said in a statement. “This tragedy has shocked us in the worst way and we wish to spend this time grieving with our close family and friends. At this time we ask for privacy from the media.”
At the time of his death, Zemser was just about to finish his second year at the Naval Academy.
“The Naval Academy is deeply saddened to report that a midshipman was named as one of the passengers who lost their life in the Amtrak train,” Jennifer Erickson, US Naval Academy spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“The midshipman was on leave and en route to their home of record when the accident occurred.”
Abid Gilani, a senior vice-president at Wells Fargo & Co’s commercial real estate division, was named on Thursday night as another of those killed.
Nutter, the Philadelphia mayor, said the search remained “very, very active”. People may have been thrown from the train, he said.
Rachel Jacobs, a CEO of ApprenNet who was said to have been on the train, was among those who had yet to be located by their families and friends. Jacobs had not been heard from since Tuesday evening when she was on her way to board the train.

Rachel Jacobs, CEO of ApprenNet. Photograph: Screengrab via CNN

“Rachel uses a so-called ‘10 Trip’ ticket, so there would be no record of her reservation until the conductor scanned her ticket on board the train,” Karl Okamoto, her friend and cofounder of ApprenNet, told CNN on Wednesday.
Jacobs, mother of a two-year-old-son, was supposed to be travelling to her New York city home from her job in Philadelphia.
“At this point we have no news,” said Okamoto. “As you can imagine, we are all very frustrated by the lack of information.”