Metrolink Crash

Prosecutors continued Thursday to try to undermine Juan Manuel Alvarez's testimony that he only planned to commit suicide and didn't intend to harm anyone else when he drove his SUV onto railway tracks three years ago and caused a deadly Metrolink crash. Under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. John Monaghan, Alvarez acknowledged that shortly after the crash, he told an emergency room doctor that he "wanted to feel the pain that the people in the train felt."

Calmly addressing a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury, Juan Manuel Alvarez testified Tuesday that he intended only to kill himself, not others, when he drove his sport utility vehicle onto railroad tracks three years ago, triggering a deadly Metrolink crash. He then apologized for causing the wreck, which killed 11 train passengers and injured 180 others. "I feel terrible and I ask for forgiveness," Alvarez said. "I believe some of the family members are here today.

Juan Manuel Alvarez does not dispute that his actions led to the tragic Metrolink train collision three years ago in which 11 people were killed and more than 180 injured. What he does contest is that he intended to harm anybody other than himself.

The attorney for Juan Manuel Alvarez has outlined how he plans to defend his client in the deadly Glendale Metrolink wreck case, saying the defendant will testify that he tried but failed during an abortive suicide attempt to move his vehicle off the tracks before it was hit by a commuter train.

A South Los Angeles woman told police Tuesday that her boyfriend tried to kill both of them when he drove their car into the path of a high-speed Metrolink train but later denied the allegation. Michelle Wright, 23, told detectives from her hospital bed that in the minutes before Brandon Julius Funches, 21, also of South Los Angeles, drove onto the train tracks around noon Monday the couple had been arguing, said Lt. George Rock of the Los Angeles Police Department.

State legislators Tuesday rejected a proposal to ban the practice of pushing passenger trains from the rear with locomotives -- a technique called into question after a Metrolink crash near Glendale killed 11 people in January 2005. The Senate Committee on Housing and Transportation voted unanimously to defeat the measure by Assembly Majority Leader Dario Frommer (D-Glendale), who, based on state hearings last summer, considers push operations dangerous.

Pulling commuter trains with a locomotive in front rather than pushing them from behind might not have saved lives in the Metrolink crash near Glendale 18 months ago, according to a federal study released Monday. The Federal Railroad Administration report further concluded that there is little difference in safety between passenger trains pushed by locomotives and those that are pulled. Researchers noted, however, that more people have died in accidents involving pushed trains.

A jury has ordered Universal Studios to pay $12 million to a woman who was seriously injured in a 2003 Metrolink crash in Burbank, finding that one of the company's truck drivers caused the collision. The verdict is the first against the entertainment giant since the same jury last month found the company liable for the crash that killed two people and injured 32 others. Metrolink was also sued for its role in the Jan.

Most workdays when Karen Mendoza pulls into the parking lot of Costco Warehouse on Los Feliz Boulevard to begin her 4:30 a.m. shift, she sees a train parked on the adjacent railroad tracks and thinks, Not today. There is no getting away from the reminders. As she logs in deliveries to Costco's receiving docks, the plaintive call of passing trains blooms in her chest. "Whenever I hear it," she says, "part of me thinks, 'This is the place. This is where it happened. Please slow down.'