TUESDAY’S deadly train wreck outside Philadelphia, which killed eight; injured hundreds, some critically, and continues to disrupt the most heavily traveled train corridor in the country, may very well have been caused not by any recklessness on the part of the engineer or by any equipment failure, but by a deliberate attack on the train by vandals from the surrounding neighborhood, according to reports by federal transportation officials.

In other words, just weeks after riots decimated part of a nearby major city, the train wreck may have been caused by the exact same behavior we saw in the riots and that was televised around the world: the malicious tossing of rocks or other hard objects at the remnants of order and authority in their neighborhoods by black vandals whose grievances are daily fanned and inflamed by our major institutions and whose destructiveness is often ignored and justified by irresponsible whites.

Here is the evidence so far that supports the theory, downplayed by the major media since it first emerged soon after the crash, that the train was hit by a projectile and careened out of control:

* Just before the derailment, both a commuter train and another Amtrak train in the same area were hit by projectiles, one of which crashed through the engineer’s window.

* Philly.com reports: “An assistant conductor on Amtrak 188 told investigators that three to four minutes out of Philadelphia, she heard a radio conversation between her engineer and the engineer of a nearby SEPTA train, “who reported to a train dispatcher that he had either been hit by a rock or shot at,” NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said Friday.

Sumwalt said the Amtrak assistant conductor, 39, then heard her engineer “say something about his train being struck by something” as well.”

* Damage to the train’s windshield suggests it could have been hit by a projectile.

* The head of Brandon Boston, the engineer, was injured. He would likely have been injured in some way anyway, but it is possible his head injury and lacerations were caused by a thrown object. Even if he was not hit by a projectile, he could have been stunned or disoriented by the sudden, explosive sound of an object hitting the window. He does not remember anything after he passed through the North Philadelphia station.

* Bostian was going below the speed limit approaching a curve and then suddenly speeded up, which would be consistent with his momentarily losing consciousness or being stunned and  unintentionally pressing on the throttle.

* Bostian is by many accounts a responsible engineer and a safety fanatic.

* “SEPTA [commuter] trains traveling through the area — including one of the poorest and most violent parts of the city — have had projectiles thrown at them in the past, whether by vandals or teenagers, she said. It was unusual that the SEPTA train was forced to stop on Tuesday night,” Fox News reports.

This is newspeak for a black neighborhood.

Notice the passive voice in The New York Times’s lede paragraph of its latest article:

The Amtrak train that derailed Tuesday, killing eight people and injuring more than 200, may have been struck by an object before it careened off the tracks, an assistant conductor on the train told investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board.

It’s as if the train may have been struck by a bolt of lightning. The shocking possibility that it may have been deliberately attacked is downplayed. The Times and other major newspapers have apparently sent no reporters out to investigate this documented history of objects being thrown at trains in the area and gives us little information about the two other trains hit the same night. What is the neighborhood like? Have people there seen rocks or other objects being thrown? How many trains have been hit in the past? There seems to be little interest in these questions. Instead we get this:

“We have reports of trains’ being struck by objects in this area about two to three times a month,” Ms. Williams said. Mostly, she said, the objects are thrown by children and do no damage.

Two to three times a month! That’s reassuring. If some projectile wasn’t the cause of this wreck, it may very well be the cause of a future crash. What kind of children throw rocks at moving trains? Where do these children come from and where do they get their callousness to the people, the human beings, inside of trains? “Children” who get a kick out of throwing rocks can throw rocks at bottles or cans on a wall or they can throw rocks at abandoned buildings. In fact, the opportunities for playful throwing of rocks or other objects is almost limitless. But to throw rocks or bricks at a moving train, especially at windows, is more than just childish play. It is a more intense expression of the anti-social alienation that characterizes the act of defacing buildings with graffiti, which is almost solely done by blacks and which has so charmed certain segments of the elite and even been called a form of art.

If it is indeed the case that rocks are routinely being thrown by “children” at trains, the public should have been told and warned long ago. There should have been a public discussion of this serious hazard to train travelers. Given that engineers are often alone at the controls, did it never occur to Amtrak officials that just such a thing might occur? Of course, it must have occurred to them. 

— Comments —

Dan R. writes:

The implications, if true, are obvious. The only thing not obvious is whether this will be the moment of awakening for too much of America.

Matthew writes:

Launching projectiles at vehicles has long been a pastime for urban “youths.”

Andrew writes:

The deaths that resulted from the criminal acts of the individuals who assaulted the train meet the very textbook definition of felony murder, second degree murder and thus are punishable by life in prison. Not that the perpetrators will ever be found, or identified, or convicted because of a reverse tolerance now of violent acts committed in retaliation for recent polarizing racial incidents.

Steve D. writes:

A minor, and entirely personal, quibble: in your post about the Philadelphia Amtrak incident, you write:

“Notice the passive voice in The New York Times’s lede paragraph…”

This is a particular bete noire for me: I hate the word lede. It’s a phony term, made up by the same generation of American reporters who have ruined journalism in this country. Howard Owens has a fairly in-depth discussion of the term on his blog. The proper (i.e., traditional) word is lead, meaning the paragraph that leads the account.

Laura writes:

Thank you for the correction — and it is important. I can’t defend my use of it at all.

May 17, 2015

Laura writes:

The New York Times, to its credit, follows up with a more extensive story on rock-throwing at trains today and even has sent a reporter into the neighborhood:

In the dark blocks of crumbling rowhouses pushed up against vacant factories along Glenwood Avenue, a group of young men hanging out on a stoop on a recent night said it was easy to sneak onto the nearby railroad tracks.

“There’s fences, but a lot of times they are falling down,” said a 16-year-old with long hair and a thin mustache who gave only his first name, Isaac. “A lot of people go down, creepy people, bums — they throw rocks, they throw bottles, but usually it’s no big deal.”

Instead of a description of rocks hurled with great force against moving trains with the intention to injure and destroy, we have “rowhouses pushed up against vacant factories,” aimless bums and an indifferent federal government that refuses to repair fences.

A passenger on a commuter train describes what it was like when his train was hit by a projectile shortly before the Amtrak crash:

Alfred Price, a documentary filmmaker, was in the train’s front car when he heard a loud boom and felt the train come to a stop. No one was injured, but when passengers knocked on the door of the engineer’s compartment, the engineer emerged dazed, Mr. Price said in a telephone interview on Friday. “The window was smashed. It was shattered,” he said. “He didn’t really know what was going on. He was in shock.”

Mayor Michael Nutter was quick earlier in the week to condemn Bostian of recklessness and he flatly disregarded the possibility that the Amtrak train had been hit by projectiles even though other trains in the area had been hit around the same time.

Earlier in the week, Mayor Michael Nutter dismissed the significance of other trains being hit by objects, saying at a news conference on Wednesday, “Different place, different train, nothing to do with this tragedy here.”

Since the latest announcement, the mayor has made no comment.

Please follow and like us: