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At least one person was killed when a commuter train crashed into a station during the Thursday morning rush hour in Hoboken, New Jersey, officials said.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said 108 other were injured but did not provide information about the deceased victim, pending proper notification of next of kin.
He did say, however, that the victim was killed while waiting on the platform of the Hudson Place station but most of the injured were aboard the four-car train.
More than 20 ambulances scrambled to the scene following the crash at approximately 8.40 a.m. (1240GMT) at the station that had approximately 250 people inside at the time, New Jersey Transit spokeswoman Jennifer Nelson told reporters.
Jersey City Medical Center CEO Joseph Scott, confirmed that three patients at the facility are in critical condition.
Federal investigators have begun a probe into the crash but New Jersey Transit train inspector Rick Ciapplo, who was on the other side of the terminal when the crash occurred, does not think a break failure is to blame.
"I don't think there was a problem with the train," he told reporters, adding that train cars are inspected every 24 hours in accordance with federal law.
Asked whether he thought it could have been a terrorist attack, he said: "Yeah sure, in this day and age, sure."
He said he was close enough to hear but didn't hear any screeching sound that would have indicated an attempt to brake.
Christie was joined at a press conference by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as both cautioned against jumping to conclusions about what caused the crash.
Both states have been the site of recent terror attacks.
"We are not going to speculate about the cause of the accident," Christie said, adding that officials "know the train came with much higher speed" than the 10-mile-per-hour limit but the engineer is "fully cooperating with law enforcement officials."
Ciapplo said he saw numerous injuries.
"One girl wasn't even moving, she was gone," he said.
His account was corroborated by William Blaine, an engineer with Norfolk Southern who was at the scene minutes after the crash. He showed reporters a mobile phone image of one person who died, identifying her only as a young female. "Gone," a distraught Blaine said as he pointed to a picture of the female victim wearing a purple sweater and jeans, lying motionless amid fallen debris.
Officials are examining the structural integrity of the historic Hoboken terminal that opened in 1907, according to Christie.
Bella Dinh-Zarr of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which has launched an investigation into the incident, told reporters late Thursday that the engineer operating the train has been released from the hospital and investigators will interview him.
She added that the scene of the crash remains unsafe until the building's canopy can be removed and there are asbestos concerns due to the age of the building.
One witness said the structure that separated the train stop area from the main hall of the station was completely destroyed.
Jamie, who did not give her last name, was on the train at the time and said it was still at full speed when it entered the station.
"We never really slowed down," she told reporters and that she didn't remember any "screeching" that would have been heard if there had been an attempt to brake.
The highest-ranking lawmaker in New Jersey, Bob Menendez, said the most recent report by New Jersey Transit shows the company does not have any trains equipped with Positive Train Control -- safety technology that helps prevents collisions and speeding derailments. Installing the technology on tracks and trains would cost the state $3.5 billion. "That's an issue that has to be clearly addressed," Menendez told CNN.
The Hoboken station was the site of another accident that injured 34 people in 2011 when a train crashed because of a mechanical failure.
Six different train lines carry an average of 15,000 passengers to New York City daily from the station.
The NTSB said there were 891 fatalities on U.S. railways in 2013, according to the most recent data. -
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