Engineer was using cell phone on duty Friday but uncertainty remains over role in crash, NTSB says
Federal investigators said today that records from Metrolink engineer Robert M. Sanchez’s cell phone show that he sent and received text messages while on duty last Friday, the day he was involved in a catastrophic collision in Chatsworth.
However, investigators have not yet analyzed the records to determine whether Sanchez was using his phone at the time he slammed into an oncoming Union Pacific freight train, causing an accident that left 25 people dead and 135 others injured.
“The Safety Board will correlate those records with other investigative information to determine as precisely as possible the exact times of those messages in relation to the engineer’s operation of his train,” the National Transportation Safety Board said in a written statement.
The agency had subpoenaed the phone records after hearing news reports that several youths said they exchanged text messages with Sanchez shortly before his train slammed into the Union Pacific engine.
