Police detain Spain train crash driver as suspect

SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain (AP) — Spanish police said Friday they arrested the driver of the train that blazed far over the speed limit into a curve and toppled over, killing 78 people, and planned to question him as a suspect for "recklessness."

As suspicion increasingly fell on the driver in Spain's worst train crash in decades, authorities also located the "black box" that is expected to shed further light on the disaster.

Investigators have opened a probe into possible failings by the 52-year-old driver and the train's internal speed-regulation systems in the Wednesday derailment. The railway defended the driver on Friday, saying he had an "exhaustive" understanding of the rail line.
In an interview with The Associated Press, an American passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was traveling 194 kph (121 mph) seconds before the crash — far above the 80 kph (50 mph) speed limit on the curve where it derailed.
At the scene, crews used a crane to hoist smashed and burned-up cars and were loading them onto flat-bed big-rigs to cart them away. The shattered front engine sat just off the tracks, as passenger train services chugged close by.

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Grieving families gathered for funerals near the site of the crash in Santiago de Compostela, a site of Catholic pilgrimage preparing to celebrate its most revered saint.
Santiago officials had been preparing for the city's festival but canceled it and took control of the city's main indoor sports arena to use as a makeshift morgue. Police lowered the death toll from 80 to 78 as forensic scientists there matched body parts.
Driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo was officially arrested late Thursday in the hospital where he was recovering. He would be questioned "as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident," Jaime Iglesias, the National Police chief of the Galicia region, said.
When asked what the alleged offense was, Iglesias said, "recklessness" but declined to give further details.
The driver is being guarded by police and has yet to be interviewed. That might be delayed because of his condition, Iglesias said, though he added that he did not have further details on his medical status.