Philadelphia train crash leaves five people dead and scores injured

 
Emergency workers clamber over the wreckage of the train in Philadelphia
David Gardner13 May 2015

Five people were killed and at least 65 were injured after a commuter train derailed in a Philadelphia suburb in the United States last night.

About 240 people were on board the Washington DC to New York train when seven carriages slipped off the tracks.

Six passengers were said to be in “critical condition’ early today.

The scene “is an absolute disastrous mess,” Mayor Michael Nutter said at a news conference following the 9.20pm crash. “It is a devastating scene down there. The engine completely separated from the train” and one car was perpendicular to the rest, he added.

An Associated Press employee, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said he was fortunate to be at the back of the train. The front of it “looks pretty bad,” he said.

Former Congressman Patrick Murphy fired off a tweet within minutes of the derailment: ‘Im on @Amtrak train that just crashed. Im ok. Helping others. Pray for those injured.’

The train flipped onto its side last night

Murphy, the first Iraq War veteran to be elected to the US House of Representatives when he represented Philadelphia from 2007 to 2011, said later: ‘It wobbled at first and then went off the tracks.

"There were some pretty banged-up people. One guy next to me was passed out. We kicked out the window in the top of the train car and helped get everyone out.’

A Philadelphia police officer helps a walking wounded passenger

He said that some of the victims were injured to the point where they couldn’t move.

One person, a woman approximately age 40, was being transported to Temple University Hospital, said ABC

The front of Amtrak Train 188 was reportedly going around a corner when it “shook.”

Police take an injured person away from the scene on a stretcher

Janelle Richards, an NBC Nightly News producer, was on the train and said she “heard a loud crash and people flew up in the air, there was a lot of jerking back and forth, a lot of smoke, then everything just stopped and people starting asking how to get off the train.”

Another passenger, Don Kelleher, said; “We were rolling along nice and smooth and then all of a sudden we were on our side.”

The twisted shell of the train after it came off the tracks

Michael Black, who was also on the train, said; “All of a sudden it felt like the brakes were hit hard and then our car. We were third from the last, just slowly started going over to the side. I tried to just brace my arm against it and then just got off.”

Yameen Allworld, a Philadelphia music producer who has worked with the Roots, was on the train and posted a video on Instagram. In the video, passengers could be heard crying and crawling through the sideways car.

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