Four or five cars of the seven-car train left the tracks about 100 yards north of the station, but none entered the adjacent Hudson and Harlem rivers, the MTA said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday that it’s possible the deadly commuter train derailment that killed four and injured dozens on Sunday was caused by a mix of speed and human error.
“This was a tricky turn on the system, but it’s a turn that’s been here for decades and trains negotiate all day long. It’s not about the turn,” Cuomo said on the Today show. “I think it’s going to turn out to be about the speed more than anything, and the operator’s operation of the train at that time.”
The Metro-North derailment, which left more than 60 injured, is still being investigated.
Passenger Emilie Miyuchi, 28, was in the first car at the time of the crash and said the train from Poughkeepsie to New York “was going pretty fast as it was turning the corner and it felt like it was going out of control a second or two before it started to derail,” the New York Daily News reports.
Cuomo said authorities will have more information after the train’s so-called black boxes are analyzed. Although there was a 70 mile-per-hour mph speed limit north of the Bronx crash site, trains are supposed to slow to 30 miles per hour at the turn. Two of the four fatalities were also identified Monday as Jim Lovell, a sound and lighting designer, and James Ferrari of Montrose, N.Y., the Journal News reports.