Train crash driver charged for reckless homicide

MADRID - The driver of a speeding train that hurtled off the rails killing 78 people in Spain on Wednesday has been charged for "reckless homicide," Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Saturday.

A passenger train drives past the site of a train crash, with the train engine (R) derailed from the track, in Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, July 27, 2013.[Photo/Agencies]

Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, 52, was discharged on Saturday morning from the hospital where he had received treatment for shock and injuries during Wednesday's accident, and was taken to the police station in Santiago.

According to Fernandez Diaz, there are "clear indications" to support the charges against the driver, who had refused to answer police's questions in his hospital bed.

The train was said to have been traveling at more than twice the speed limit on a curve when it hurtled off the rails and slammed into a concrete wall, with one carriage leaping up onto a siding.

The driver should have started slowing the train before reaching a bend that train drivers had been told to respect, the president of Spanish rail network administrator ADIF said.

Fernandez Diaz was visiting the crash site along with Public Works Minister Ana Pastor who assured that the judicial investigation would discover "everything that happened" prior to the accident.