Long Road to Cleanup, Recovery Begins

Recovery teams ended their search for bodies in the twisted wreckage of a Metrolink crash Thursday, while cleanup crews prepared for the delicate task of removing the pile of rail cars in which 11 people died and about 180 were injured Wednesday.

Throughout the day, police investigators, medical examiners and hazardous-waste crews combed through the shells of shattered rail cars searching for evidence that could be used to prosecute the man who allegedly triggered the crash by driving onto the tracks in a failed suicide attempt. Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, was charged late Wednesday night with 10 counts of murder and could face the death penalty.

As workers in white protective suits collected items in clear plastic bags and detectives mapped the wreckage with laser measuring devices, a crane moved into position to remove the cars. Officials said the tracks would not be cleared before the weekend.

“We are beyond the recovery stage,” Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said at the scene, which is along the border of Glendale and Los Angeles. “We’re convinced there are no more bodies.”

Eight people killed were on southbound train No. 100. Three died on northbound train No. 901, including its conductor, Thomas Ormiston. At least 27 people remained hospitalized, including the engineer of train No. 100. And at least four of those people were reported to be in critical condition. Doctors said nearly all of the injured were expected to recover, but many face weeks or months of painful rehabilitation.

The cars are scattered over an area the size of three football fields, and Lorenz said they would either be hauled off or lifted onto the railroad tracks and towed away late Thursday or this morning when all evidence had been collected.

“With TV shows like ‘CSI’ and everything like that, a jury wants to see more than someone giving a statement admitting that they did it,” Lorentz said.

Alvarez, whom Glendale Police Chief Randy Adams described as deranged, reportedly abandoned his SUV as the southbound train bore down on him before dawn Wednesday. Authorities said he watched as the train struck his vehicle, careened off the tracks, plowed into a parked Union Pacific train and jackknifed into another commuter train.

Police on Thursday gave new details of what followed.

Alvarez ran to the front steps of a home about 100 yards away and began stabbing himself in the chest and wrists with scissors. A woman in the house called 911, and as paramedics rushed Alvarez to a hospital, he told them what had happened, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Guillermo Perez said. They radioed police, who arrested him at County-USC Medical Center.

Alvarez is being held without bail and is under suicide watch in the hospital’s jail ward. His self-inflicted injuries, worse than originally thought, forced the postponement of his arraignment Thursday.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said the charges allege a special circumstance of murder by train derailment. That could invoke the death penalty, although prosecutors haven’t decided whether to seek it, Cooley said. Another count of murder will be added, he said, when the 11th victim is identified.

“The fact that he was distraught or distressed isn’t a defense here,” Cooley said. “So what if he is distressed. So what if he is distraught -- that is no excuse for endangering so many lives.... He is not as distraught as the next of kin of 11 murder victims and more than 100 people injured thanks to his actions.”

While prosecutors worked on the criminal case, doctors at more than a dozen hospitals treated the victims.

At Glendale Adventist Medical Center, 51-year-old Steve Toby, who works as a sound engineer for the Los Angeles City Council, was recovering from surgery. The impact of the crash sheared off part of the bone below his knee and displaced it several inches. The injuries were severe, said his surgeon, Dr. Philip Merritt. “This is like a Humpty-Dumpty type of situation,” he said, adding that Toby has an 85% chance of walking normally.

On Thursday afternoon, Toby lay in a hospital bed with a huge splint and morphine pump.

“The road to recovery -- it’s going to be a long road,” he said.

He doesn’t know if he will be able to return to his job at City Hall, which involves moving heavy sound equipment. He may also have to give up his favorite pastime: riding horses.

“When you’re used to being a pretty physical person, this is a change in lifestyle.... I’m not fully aware of the reality of it. It still seems a little bit unreal.”

Still, he said, “I’m alive. There are a lot of folks that didn’t make it, and a lot of folks a lot worse off than me. I’m lucky.”

At Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Fermin Lagua, a 64-year-old immigrant from the Philippines, also considered himself a lucky man.

Lagua was pulled from train No. 100, bleeding heavily from a large gash in his head. The crash also broke a rib and fractured his left knee.

When the train hit, he and fellow passengers in the first car “were popcorn,” he said, “going up, going down.”

His trauma surgeon, Dr. Thuc Bach, said he expected Lagua’s rib to require six weeks or more to heal. The knee may require surgery and probably will take at least a month to heal. “Generally speaking,” he said, “I think he’s doing pretty well.”

Two of the 11 people killed were employees of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff Lee Baca said Thursday that Alvarez should be subject to the highest form of prosecution.

Baca, who has often been an advocate on mental health issues, agreed that Alvarez’s despondency was no excuse for the carnage he allegedly inflicted.

“He may have been despondent, but he tried to make a public spectacle of his death on the tracks,” Baca said. “He didn’t want to die quietly. He wanted attention. If he was rational enough to make a public spectacle of his suicidal tendencies, then he is rational enough to be held accountable for his actions. It is not an excuse.”

Legal experts disagreed about prosecutors’ likely successful tactics.

“The main pitfall to this case is going to be proving first-degree murder,” said Peter Keane, a professor at Golden Gate University Law School and former chief of the San Francisco public defender’s office.

“I suspect a jury would come back with a bunch of second-degree murder convictions,” he said.

Citing the wrecking of a train as a special circumstance, Keane said, would be unusual because the statute comes from the days of railroad robbers who blew up the tracks to steal from trains.

But Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at Loyola University Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said such a case has a precedent in Pennsylvania, where prosecutors convicted a man in 1951 and obtained the death penalty.

In a separate incident Thursday, authorities in Orange County reported that a despondent Aliso Viejo man parked his SUV on railroad tracks used by Metrolink and told police that he wanted to commit suicide. Irvine police declined to say if the incident was a copycat crime.

At the crash scene, five Los Angeles County sheriff’s employees who collect fares on Metrolink trains were escorted to the site by deputies and set a large wreath of flowers before one set of railroad tracks.

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Times staff writers Richard Winton, Charles Ornstein, David Reyes, Erica Williams and Veronica Torrejon contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Schedule changes

Shuttle buses will provide limited commuter service today on the Metrolink lines cut by the collision in Glendale. Regular commuter rail service probably won’t resume until next week, said Steve Lantz, a Metrolink spokesman.

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The schedules for today are as follows:

* Southbound trains 102, 104 and 106 and northbound trains 113, 115 and 119 will continue to run between Los Angeles and Ventura County.

* Passengers boarding northbound trains at Union Station will switch to buses in Glendale and switch back to trains in Burbank to complete their journeys. The same process will operate in reverse for southbound trains.

* Trains 100, 101, 105, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 116, 117 and 118 have been canceled.

* Southbound trains 202, 204, 206, 208, 212, 216 and 222, and northbound trains 201, 207, 211, 215, 217, 219 and 223 between Los Angeles and Lancaster will continue to run today, using the shuttle buses between Glendale and Burbank. Service will be canceled on Saturday.

* Trains 200, 203, 205, 209, 210, 213, 214, 218, 220 and 221 have been canceled.

* Trains in the 900 series normally operating between downtown Los Angeles and Bob Hope Airport also have been canceled.*

Los Angeles Times