Minutes before a deadly Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia, a local commuter train was halted in the same train corridor by a projectile that went through the engineer’s window.
Officials of the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority told the Philadelphia Inquirer they are investigating the incident. There was no immediate indication that the mishap with the commuter train was related to the Amtrak crash, which killed at least 6 passengers and injured more than 60.
The northbound SEPTA train was en route to Trenton around 9:25 p.m. Tuesday on tracks beside the Amtrak rails when it was struck by “an unknown projectile” that broke the engineer’s window, SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams told the newspaper.
At 9:53 p.m., a young woman named Alex Ferraro tweeted that her father was on the commuter train and that it had been “shot.”
“My dad is stuck on a septa train that was shot at that’s behind this derailed Amtrak train,” she wrote on Twitter. The report has not been confirmed.
No one was injured in that incident, and about 80 train passengers were transferred to buses.
About three minutes later and four miles away in the same train corridor, Amtrak’s northbound Train 188 derailed. Federal authorities are investigating the cause of that crash.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.