October 9, 1995
Web posted at: 9:15 p.m. EDT
From Correspondent Mark Leff
PALO VERDE, Arizona (CNN) -- The president of Amtrak, Thomas Downs, is calling the suspected sabotage of the "Sunset Limited" an "act of cowardice." One person, an Amtrak employee, is dead, and more than 70 are injured in the aftermath of the train wreck in Arizona.
For the 268 people aboard the train, en route to Los Angeles, terror came in the middle of the night in the middle of the Arizona desert. "The first I knew, it was making a bang-bang-bang sort of noise and I was upside down...hurting," said passenger Virginia Addison. (77K AIFF sound or 77K WAV sound)
The wider horror came after daylight when investigators determined the derailment at the trestle was no accident.
"It seems to be involving what you can call terrorists. We have the Oklahoma City problem, we had the New York problem - we have terrorists across our nation and now it has hit my county."
-- Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Sheriff
(145K AIFF sound or 145K WAV sound)
Anti-government notes found near the crash site had the signature "Sons of Gestapo". However no one seems to have heard of the so-called group. A search of U.S. newspapers through electronic databases came up blank to a reference of "Sons of Gestapo". Also a search of about six months' worth of Internet discussion groups and World Wide Web pages provided no information.
An organization called Klanwatch, which tracks hate groups, has never heard of "Sons of Gestapo".
Klanwatch director, Joe Roy, said it could be some kind of local group, or "this could be Fred the farmer who's mad at Amtrak for cutting across his land."
There were other clues that suggested sabotage. Authorities pointed out a piece of wire they said somebody used to defeat a computer system that senses breaks in the track.
Downs told reporters whoever did it knew something about railroads. The train was traveling at 50 mph when it hit a piece of track that had been moved out of alignment. The engines made it across the trestle but three cars tumbled into a 30-foot ravine and pulled all but four of the rest off the tracks.
The remoteness of the crash hampered rescue work. Helicopters were about the only way to get the most seriously injured to hospitals in Phoenix about 60 miles away.
The deliberate nature of the incident, and the anti- government documents found at the scene, have made this a fatal derailment with implications that go well beyond the friends and family of the people on board.
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