Arizona cable stop
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The Arizona train attack occurred on October 9, 1995 near the small town of Palo Verde in the US state of Arizona , when an Amtrak passenger train derailed because perpetrators unknown to this day had loosened rail bolts and moved a section of track. One person died and 78 others were injured, some seriously.
procedure
bad luck
At around 1:40 a.m., the Amtrak Sunset Limited, with 268 passengers, passed a slight curve on the route from Miami to Los Angeles at a speed of around 80 km / h when it hit the prepared section of the route and, as a result, the two locomotives and several Wagons fell over a 4.5 meter high bridge into a dry river bed . One employee of the train crew died and 78 other passengers were injured, at least a dozen seriously. The scene of the accident was difficult to reach, which is why rescue workers only arrived at the scene of the accident after some delay.
During a later examination of the track section affected by the sabotage, it turned out that the perpetrator (s) must have been familiar with the security mechanisms of the railway company. A current flow is conducted through the rails on this route, which is used as an indicator for the functionality of the route. If the current flow is interrupted, all signals on the route switch to halt and thus prevent an accident. When the Sunset Limited attacked, the contact on the detached piece of rail was bridged by means of a wire so that the current could continue to flow and the emergency mechanism did not trigger.
Letters of confession and perpetrators
Shortly after the accident, a passenger who had left the crashed train found a letter of confession in which a group called "Sons of the Gestapo" claimed responsibility for the attack. The typewriter note made critical references to the United States government, local Arizona law enforcement agencies, and the two years prior siege of the headquarters of the Davidians , a religious sect in Texas, which killed 76 people in a fire Life came.
Despite extensive investigations, no perpetrator has been identified to date. It was also taken into account that the confession letter found was a diversionary maneuver that was intended to conceal the actual perpetrator and that the signing group never existed. In addition to the assumption that it could be an attack by a right-wing extremist group, the act of an angry railway employee was not ruled out due to the necessary knowledge of the track system and the bridging of the safety mechanism.