Death toll in Amtrak wreck rises to 8; all accounted for

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA

The death toll from the Amtrak wreck rose to eight with the discovery of another body in a mangled railcar Thursday, while a lawyer for the train’s engineer said his client has no recollection of the crash and wasn’t on his cellphone or using drugs or alcohol.

A cadaver dog found the eighth body in the wreckage of the first passenger car nearly 36 hours after the crash, Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer said.

Officials believe they have now accounted for all 243 people who were thought to have been aboard the train, Mayor Michael Nutter said.

Amtrak, meanwhile, said limited train service between Philadelphia and New York should resume Monday, with full service by Tuesday.

Federal investigators have said the train was barreling through the city at 106 mph before it ran off the rails along a sharp bend where the speed limit drops to 50 mph. But they don’t know why it was going so fast.

“I don’t think that any commonsense, rational person would think that it was OK to travel at that level of speed knowing that there was a pretty significant restriction on how fast you could go through that turn,” the mayor said Thursday, repeating criticism of the engineer he made a day earlier.

Lawyer Robert Goggin told ABC News that engineer Brandon Bostian, 32, of New York City, suffered a concussion in Tuesday night’s wreck and had 15 staples in his head, along with stitches in one leg.

“He remembers coming into the curve. He remembers attempting to reduce speed and, thereafter, he was knocked out,” Goggin said. But he said Bostian does not recall anything out of the ordinary and does not remember using the emergency brake, which investigators say was applied moments before the crash.

The lawyer said the next thing the engineer remembered was coming to, looking for his bag, retrieving his cellphone and calling 911 for help. He said the engineer’s cellphone was off and stored in his bag before the accident, as required.

“As a result of his concussion, he has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of the events,” Goggin said. He said he believes the engineer’s memory will probably return once the head injury subsides.