A Metrolink engineer sent a text message from his cellphone 22 seconds before he collided with an oncoming freight train in an accident that killed 25 people last month, according to preliminary information released Wednesday by federal authorities.
Engineer Robert M. Sanchez sent the message at 4:22 p.m., just before he slammed into the Union Pacific train Sept. 12 in Chatsworth, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement. He also received a message about a minute earlier, the agency said.
In all, Sanchez received or sent 57 text messages while on duty the day of the catastrophic collision.
The findings fill in key gaps regarding the moments before the crash and indicate that Sanchez was conscious and feeling well enough to text, even though the practice is strictly prohibited by Metrolink policy.
Officials didn't say whom Sanchez was messaging. A Metrolink official said an engineer on another commuter rail train was suspended for sending text messages about the time of the crash.
The safety board cautioned that additional research was necessary to develop a more complete picture. Determination of "the precise timing and correlation of these events is still underway," the NTSB said.
Two USC academics said Wednesday that judging by what is known about the train's speed after it left the Chatsworth station, the last text message would have been sent shortly after Sanchez passed a signal that should have warned him of the freight train.
But it remains to be conclusively determined whether Sanchez had left the station when he sent that message and how close he was to the point of impact.
NTSB spokesman Terry Williams said Wednesday that the agency would not comment beyond the preliminary information in the statement.
Rail experts said they were alarmed that Sanchez was operating his cellphone along a critical segment of the train's downtown L.A.-to-Ventura County run. The area, a mile north of the Chatsworth station, is where Metrolink trains must regularly stop so freight trains can pull off the main track onto a siding.
"For me, it just gives me heart palpitations thinking about it," said Tim Smith, a former train engineer and California chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the union that represented Sanchez. "The last thing you want to be doing is something that takes your eyes off the road."
