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Sources: Train engineer said he was ‘in a daze’ before crash

Posted at 4:10 PM, Dec 03, 2013
and last updated 2013-12-03 16:10:55-05

(CNN) — The engineer of the train that derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx — killing four people — told investigators at the scene that he was “in a daze” before the crash, two senior New York law enforcement sources told CNN Tuesday.

The crash on New York’s Metro-North Hudson line also injured 67 people.

In a brief conversation with investigators moments after the derailment, William Rockefeller described what was happening before the derailment. He said he was “going along and I’m in a daze. I don’t know what happened,” according to a law enforcement official familiar with the details of that conversation.

The locomotive and all seven coaches jumped the tracks while barreling into a curve at 82 mph, nearly three times the 30 mph-limit for the curve, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener told reporters Monday.

The train was about 10 miles short of its destination, Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, when it derailed on the approach to the Spuyten Duyvil station in the Bronx.