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 The truck driver, who was not hurt, left the scene near Oxnard on
foot and police found him talking on a cellphone in "some sort of
distress" more than 1.6 miles (2.6 km) away, Assistant Police Chief
Jason Benites said.
Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, was taken into custody on felony
hit-and-run charges for leaving the scene, he said.
The force of the impact overturned three double-decker Metrolink
rail cars and derailed two others, ripped the truck apart and left
twisted wreckage smoldering for hours.
National Transportation Safety Board member Robert Sumwalt told
reporters late on Tuesday that the truck appeared to have traveled
some 80 feet (24 meters) down the track before hitting the train.
"It was not stuck, it was not bottomed out on the track or something
like that," he said. Officials had said earlier that the truck was
stuck on the rails.
Police said it appeared the driver of the heavy-duty Ford pickup,
who was towing a trailer full of welding equipment, had taken a
wrong turn in the pre-dawn darkness and ended up on the tracks as
the train approached at 79 miles per hour.
Benites said the driver had undergone unspecified tests at a
hospital and that investigators were looking into the possibility
that drugs or alcohol were involved in the crash.
 "I believe it is safe to say it was not a deliberate act," he said.
The train used an emergency braking system and the rail cars had
safety features that helped absorb the impact, Metrolink spokesman
Jeff Lustgarten said.
"I think we can safely say that the technology worked. It definitely
minimized the impact," he said. "It would have been much worse
without it."
DANGEROUS CROSSING?
Ventura County Emergency Medical Services administrator Steve
Carroll said 30 of the injured people were treated at hospitals
local to Oxnard, an affluent coastal city of some 200,000 about 45
miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Among the most seriously injured was the train's operator, who was
in critical condition at the Ventura County Medical Center with
extensive chest injuries affecting his heart and lungs, hospital
spokeswoman Sheila Murphy said.
The operator, who has not been publicly identified, was able to
communicate with doctors, she said.
Sumwalt said investigators would examine the train's recorders and
seek to determine if crossing arms were functioning properly.
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The incident took place where the Metrolink tracks cross busy Rice
Avenue in Oxnard, a street used by a steady stream of big transport
and farm trucks.
"It is a very dangerous crossing," said Rafael Lemus, who works down
the street from the crash site. "The lights come on too late before
the trains come. It is not safe."
The wreck caused major delays to Metrolink lines across Ventura
County, and commuters had to use buses.
Amtrak, which suspended its passenger rail service between Los
Angeles and San Luis Obispo, said it would resume limited operations
on Wednesday.
Three weeks ago a Metro-North commuter train struck a car at a
crossing outside New York City and derailed in an accident that
killed six people.
In 2008, a crowded Metrolink commuter train plowed into a Union
Pacific locomotive in Chatsworth, California, killing 25 people and
injuring 135 in an accident officials blamed on the commuter train
engineer's failure to stop at a red light.
And in 2005 a Metrolink train struck a sport utility vehicle parked
on the tracks in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, killing 11
people and injuring 180.
(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney, Barbara Goldberg and James
Dalgleish in New York, Rory Carroll and Curtis Skinner in San
Francisco, Eric Johnson in Seattle and Eric Kelsey and Dan Whitcomb
in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Louise Ireland)
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