He also said the controls of the train had been “manipulated” and that investigators were looking into if an issue with the train signal was caused by “negligence versus something else”.
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The Red Line train left its southernmost station early on Thursday morning, travelling north towards Boston for four stops, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) said. The passengers were uninjured, and they disembarked at JFK/UMass Station, after MBTA staffers cut the power to the track and caught up with the train.
According to sources close to the investigation, the runaway train incident was the result of human error, with no criminal intent. The man is 51 years old and a 28-year veteran of the MBTA.
Pollack described Thursday’s incident as being an “unacceptable breach of our responsibility to keep our riders safe….”
“So part of the investigation will be to understand whether that occurred”, he added.
Kristen Setera, a spokeswoman for the Boston office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said in an email that the agency was aware of the incident and was in contact with transit police, but provided no other information, the Associated Press reported. None of the approximately 50 passengers were hurt, officials said.
“We were all kind of, like: ‘What happened?”
The investigation will look into whether the MBTA’s existing procedures are sufficient and whether the required procedures may or may not have been followed. The operator received permission, exited the train, and the train left the station.
Under protocol, an operator is supposed to put the train’s master control – located on the train’s dash – into a “full service brake” and deploy a secondary hand brake 3 feet away before exiting the train.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said the train was tampered with.
The train was taken out of service and will remain impounded until the investigation concludes. “It would be a prohibited act if in fact there was any type of cord that was wrapped in that manner”, Pollack said.
‘This train was tampered with, and it was tampered with by somebody who knew what they were doing, ‘ Baker said during an interview on Boston Herald Radio.
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The incident, which saw the train go 5 miles, began at 6:08 a.m.at the Braintree station on the MBTA’s Red Line, south of Boston, when the operator apparently stepped off the train to inspect a signal that was experiencing a problem, said Gov. Charlie Baker.
