Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has assumed personal control the investigation in breach of railway transport safety and operation standards entailing large damage under Part 1 of Article 263 of the RF Penal Code after a collision of two trains at the Kuntsevo-2 station.
Experienced specialists and criminalists of the Investigative Committee’s Central Office have joined the probe. A meeting was held to hear tentative results of operations carried out at the site in the past few hours and to outline a plan of further investigative operations.
Mr. Bastrykin instructed the investigators to look carefully and impartially into all circumstances surrounding the incident, assess the actions of both train crews and of all the services responsible for the safety on the section the collision had taken place on, reveal and respond to all reasons and contributing factors of the collision.
All possible versions are now being considered. The initial investigative operations, including questioning of train drivers disproved the version that the commuter train crew used an emergency brake to prevent the train from running over a pedestrian, but showed that it was applied because the train’s brake had failed. To check this option, the investigators have confiscated documents on the train’s maintenance.
As became known earlier, a commuter train travelling from Moscow to Usovo collided with a passenger train en route from Moscow to Brest at about 10:40 PM on Saturday, at kilometer mark 9 between Fili and Kuntsevo-2 stations. More than 50 people were injured and 12 of them hospitalized. The locomotive of the passenger train and 3 carriages of the commuter train derailed.
By now the investigators have examined the main parts of damaged trains, seized documents and items relative to the investigation, ordered forensic inquiries. They are now questioning witnesses and working to confirm the number and names of the injured.
Official spokesperson for the RF Investigative Committee S.L. Petrenko
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