Spanish police arrest train driver, death toll drops to 78

Passenger says TV monitor showed speed was 194 km/h, far above limit of 80 km/h

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain Spanish police said Friday they have arrested the driver of the train that sped through a curve and toppled over, killing 78 people, and plan to question him over suspected reckless driving.

As blame increasingly fell on the still-hospitalized driver over Spain’s deadliest railway crash in decades, authorities located the train’s socalled “black box” that is expected to shed further light on the disaster’s cause.

Investigators said they would seek evidence of failings by Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, the 52-year-old driver, as well as the train’s internal speed-regulation systems in the Wednesday derailment.

The chief of the train operator, Renfe, defended the driver Friday, lauding what it called his exhaustive experience. But the country’s railway agency, Adif, noted that the driver should have started slowing the train long before reaching the disastrous turn.

In an interview with The Associated Press, an American passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was travelling 194 km/h seconds before the crash — far above the 80 km/h speed limit on the curve where it derailed.

The passenger, 18-year-old Stephen Ward, said the train appeared to have accelerated, not decelerated.

And Gonzalo Ferre, president of Adif, said the driver should have started slowing the train four kilometres before reaching a dangerous bend that train drivers had been told to respect.

“Four kilometres before the accident happened, he already had warnings that he had to begin slowing his speed, because as soon as he exits the tunnel he needs to be travelling at 80 km/h,” Ferre said.

At the scene, hundreds of onlookers watched as crews used a crane Friday to hoist smashed and burned-up rail cars onto flatbed trucks to cart them away.

Grieving families gathered for funerals near the site of the crash in Santiago de Compostela, a site of Catholic pilgrimage that had been preparing to celebrate its most revered saint, James, but those annual festivities were cancelled Thursday.

Police lowered the death toll Friday from 80 to 78.