SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain: The driver of a train that derailed near the northwestern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela and killed 80 persons on Wednesday, has been arrested, police said on Friday.
The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was officially detained in the hospital where is recovering, Galicia region National Police Chief Jaime Iglesias said.
Garzon Amo would be questioned “as a suspect for a crime linked to the cause of the accident,” Iglesias said.
Iglesias said the driver is being guarded by police and cannot yet testify because of his medical condition. He said he did not have details of the medical condition but that it could delay the driver’s statement.
The deadly accident, regarded as one of the worst in the history of Spain’s rail network, happened on Wednesday when the train hurtled off the tracks on a bend about three kilometers (two miles) from Santiago de Compostela station in the northwestern region of Galicia, killing at least 80 passengers and injuring more than 175 others.
The train was transporting 218 passengers and four crewmembers from Madrid to the shipbuilding city of Ferrol, when four of its carriages overturned and wagons piled into each other and folded up.
