WORLD> America
Train operator in Boston collision is dead
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-29 15:29

NEWTON, Mass. - Two commuter trains collided and derailed during the evening rush hour outside Boston on Wednesday, trapping and killing the operator of one train and injuring several passengers, authorities said.

The crash came just hours after an elevated train derailed in Chicago, sending several people to hospitals in a wreck that officials quickly blamed on operator error.

 

Emergency rescue workers and fire fighters work at the scene of a train collision, in Newton, Mass., Wednesday, May 28, 2008. Two above-ground trains derailed after a rear-end collision near a mass transit station in Newton, injuring several passengers and trapping the operator of one of one the trains. [Agencies]

Investigators did not know what caused the Boston wreck, which killed the 24-year-old operator and injured about 10 passengers in an above-ground accident on the city's "T" system near a station in suburban Newton.

Terrese Edmonds' body was still trapped in the wreckage late Wednesday, and the operation to rescue her changed to a recovery mission, said Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

The two-car train she was operating slammed into the back of another two-car train approaching Woodland Station, Pesaturo said.

"The first one was stopped at a red signal and was ready to proceed to the station when it was struck," he said.

One passenger was flown to a Boston hospital, and the other injured commuters were taken to nearby Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Pesaturo said.

The hospital had eight train-wreck patients, none with serious injuries, said spokesman Brian O'Dea.

Passenger Barry Gallup, standing aboard the train that was hit, told WCVB-TV that the impact threw him to the floor.

"I may have been knocked out for a few seconds. ... The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground," Gallup told WCVB.

He described a confused scene immediately after the crash, with some passengers screaming and small fires breaking out on the side of the train. Other passengers concurred about the chaos.

"There was a 70-year-old old guy who went ballistic, screaming at the conductor, 'You killed my wife! You killed my wife!' And the wife is going, 'I'm OK! I'm OK,'" passenger Matt Stone, 46, told The Boston Globe.

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