The National Transportation Safety Board is interviewing the engineer who was operating the commuter train that plowed int🔴o the Hobok🌊en terminal Thursday morning, as investigators analyze one of🌳 tw🔥o black boxes that was recovered from the wreckage, officials said Friday.
The train’s operator, 48-year-old Thomas Gallagher, has been cooperating with authorities, officials said. He did not have any drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the crash, which killed a young mother standing on the platform and injured more than 100 other people, .
Information from the device that was pulled from the rear of the three-ca🧔r passenger train was supposed to be downlo﷽aded Friday morning as officials probe the 8:45 a.m. morning rush-hour crash, .
Key information like the speed the crowded ꦦtrai♒n was going before it barreled into the station, causing mass destruction, may be on the device.
The second recorder is located in the front cab car and investigators h꧟ave been unable to reach it due to fallen debris from the collapsed canopy at the station.
“Right now there are some challenges to the investiga🔴tion with respect to accessing the wreckage,” an NTSB sp🌳okesman said.
The agency was schedul🅷ed to hold a press confere🉐nce with updates on the investigation at 5:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, the NJ Transit portion of the Hoboken station — one of the busiest💎 transit hubs in New Jersey — remained shut down Frida🍰y, making for an agonizingly slow morning commute for some.
“My commute is a mess now,” Michelle Pastor, 37, of Kingsland, NJ, said at the Secaucu𝔍s station, which is one stop before the Hoboken station at the end of the line.
“I had to go to Hoboken yeste💎rday and couldn’t,” said Pastor, who works in New York City. “My family kept calling to make sure I was alive [yesterday]. Now I have to pay $30 🐭for parking in Secaucus.”
Commuter Yolanda Lynch, 45, of Eas📖t Orange, NJ, said Friday morning, “Everything was super-slow, headache everywhere.”
The doomed No. 1614 train on the Pascack Valley Line, which was running at an accelerated speed, was due at the Hoboke♔n station at 8:38 a.m. Thurs𝓀day.
The crash killed 34-year-old Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, a Hoboken mother who had just dropped her year-old daughter off at daycare before she was caugꦜht in harm’s way.
With Post wires