On a normal Sunday morning in New York City, passengers were boarding a Metro North passenger train in the Bronx, New York. The train had one hundred and fifty passengers on board for the morning commute near Manhattan. According to passenger Frank Tatulli the train appeared to be going “a lot faster” than usual as the train approached the sharp curve near the Spuyten Duyvil station.

The derailment caused the train’s locomotive and some of the seven cars to topple over, leaving the lead car inches from the water. The windows of coach cars broke apart. Gravel began flying into the passengers faces.  New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo states after the crash, “That is a dangerous area on the track just by design. The trains are going about 70 miles an hour coming down the straight part of the track. They slow to about 30 miles per hour to make that sharp curve… where the Hudson River meets the Harlem River, and that is a difficult area of track…”

After the train cars quit moving all anybody could see was smoke. The dust cleared and people started staggering out of their cars, moaning for help. More than sixty people were injured and four people were left dead after the smoke cleared and the authorities came to the rescue. As deadly as the derailment was, the toll could have been far greater had the accident happened on a weekday or had the lead car plunged into the water.

The operator of the train was identified as William Rockefeller, of Rockland County, NY. Rockefeller insisted to the investigators that he had tried to press on the brakes going into the bend, but the brakes didn’t work. According to sources, Rockefeller is a 20-year veteran of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) with a clean disciplinary record. Many of Rockefeller’s neighbors state that they wouldn’t describe Rockefeller as a speed demon, but he is an avid motorcyclist who liked to “live on the edge”.

Rescue teams used giant inflatable air bags to remove people who’d been thrown from the train and were trapped underneath. A crane was brought to the scene to lift the derailed cars upright. “It’s going to be a long time before this is cleared up,” MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders told Fox News. The investigators are just waiting for the reports to come back from the labs. The information will give us a better look at what happened. In the mean time, the governor of New York says, “We’d like to get a service up toward the end of the week.” Remembering the deceased will just be a way to make amends with the situation.