Federal investigators are trying to determine why an SUV was stalled on the tracks moments before a collision with a Metro-North commuter train that killed 6 people in New York's Westchester county Tuesday night, including the driver.
Witnesses said the driver, 49-year-old Ellen Page, got out of her utility vehicle on the tracks after the crossing gates came down and hit her car at a crossing in Valhalla, the Associated Press reported.
"She wasn't in a hurry at all, but she had to have known that a train was coming," Rick Hope, who was in his car behind her, told the Journal News.
Hope said he made room for Page to back up and waved at her to do so. But she got back in her car and began driving forward on the tracks.
Seconds later, her car was stuck by a Metro-North train. Both the SUV and the first train car were set on fire. The force of the collision caused the track's electric third rail to pierce the train and SUV, the AP reported.
Five male passengers and Page were killed. The passengers are identified as 41-year-old Aditya Tomar; 42-year-old Joseph Nadol; 69-year-old Walter Liedtke; 53-year-old Eric Vandercar; and 36-year-old Robert Dirks, according to The New York Times.
The federal agency investigating the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board, will probe the crossing signals and tracks to see if they were functioning properly. According to New York Senator Charles Schumer, the train was traveling within the 60-to-70 miles per hour speed limit.
So far there is nothing to indicate the crossing gates malfunctioned, however it is still very early in the investigation, NTSB Vice Chairman Robert Sumwalt told the AP.
Investigators are also reviewing the train's data recorders and are checking to see if the SUV had one as well.
The inquiry's findings may or may not spell more trouble for Metro-North, the nation's second largest commuter railroad after the Long Island Rail Road. The company has been involved in a string of train accidents in recent years, including one in 2013 that saw four people killed after a Metro-North train derailed in the Bronx.
A total of five Metro-North accidents in 2013 and 2014 were determined by the NTSB to be the railroad's fault, the AP reported.
Tuesday's disaster was the deadliest in Metro-North's 22-year history.
