NTSB has yet to interview injured engineer in deadly crash
HOBOKEN, N.J. — National Transportation Safety Board investigators held off questioning the engineer in the deadly Hoboken train crash because of his injuries Friday and struggled to lift clues from the train’s black box recorders.
Authorities want to know why the NJ Transit commuter train with engineer Thomas Gallagher at the controls smashed through a steel-and-concrete bumper and hurtled into the station’s waiting area Thursday morning. A woman on the platform was killed, and more than 100 others were injured.
NTSB vice chair T. Bella Dinh-Zarr said the board, the lead agency in the investigation, has been “in touch” with the injured Gallagher but has yet to interview him. She said blood and urine were taken from him and sent for testing, standard procedure in train accidents.
However, a government official said that investigators from one of the other agencies taking part in the probe interviewed Gallagher three times Friday. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity, would not disclose what Gallagher said but described him as co-operative.