LOS ANGELES — In a bizarre incident at the Port of Los Angeles, the engineer of a Pacific Harbor Line locomotive has been arrested on suspicion of train wrecking after he reportedly derailed the locomotive intentionally on Tuesday in an effort to strike the hospital ship USNS Mercy.
The South Bay Daily Breeze reports that Eduardo Moreno, 44, was arrested on Wednesday. The Department of Justice said Moreno admitted in two separate interviews that he had intentionally derailed the locomotive. The incident occurred about 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. KTLA-TV reports that after running off the track at high speed, the locomotive crashed through several barriers and nearly hit three occupied vehicles. It finally came to a halt about 250 yards from where the hospital ship is anchored. Photographs show the Motive Power Industries MP20B-3 in a vacant lot well beyond the end of the track. No one was injured in the incident.
A release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the incident was witnessed by a California Highway Patrol officer, who arrested Moreno. He was turned over to the L.A. Port Police, who are investigating along with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. In an interview with the Port Police, Moreno said he acted alone and had not pre-planned the incident.
The ship is moored in the harbor to provide extra hospital capacity as the Los Angeles area deals with the COVID-19 virus. It will be used for patients without the virus. Moreno reportedly told police he believed the ship had an alternate purpose, such as a “government takeover,” and wanted to use the incident to draw attention to the ship’s purpose.
If convicted, Moreno could face up to 20 years in prison.
— Updated at 7:35 p.m. CDT with additional details.
therow this stupid nimrod butt in jail.he deserves 20 years,as they say in spanish este el loco su cabesa.
There’s a photo of the PC incident on page 56 of the November 1968 issue of Trains, with a wry commentary by DPM. At least two ALCO cab units appear to be coupled to the U Boats.
This is what happens when people have no faith, in either themselves or others.
Carl Welch- that has got to be the most ridiculous thing posted
lately in this forum. Moreno was completely wrong in what he six-month he was deluded by the looney-tune conspiracy theories that are surrounding this panxemic, and based on your post I would say you are as well. What day we keep on track here (inline Moreno, who by now is an ex-PSL employee) and leave the wacky theories to Alex Jones and his paranoid bunch.
There are nutt jobs everywhere. This proves that someone in the 10th standard deviation can have their 15 minutes of fame.
Oh heck I think 20 years in the clink for this Mensa candidate should help him with his “thinking”. Kick the Rush Limbaugh pod casts over here and no one will get hurt.
Carl Welch, what kind of bizarre junk do you read? The Fed’s job is to stabilize the various financial markets. They haven’t done anything that they didn’t do in 2008. This go around they corrected the one mistake they made in 2008, which was not acting strongly enough, fast enough.
I checked the line just now. There is an open derail in place just before the ROW goes under the bridge. He got pretty far.
That’s a GP-40 not a GP-38 and it’s one of the white and red “worms in love” units, very rare paint job.
Moreno is not behaving sanely, but it’s not because he’s entirely wrong. The hospital ship is irrelevant, but the takeover is by the Federal Reserve, not the government. Virus is a diversionary tactic.
This is bizarre!
PAUL – Thanks for the info. I was pretty sure it was 1969 but hedged and put down 1968 as a maybe.
Sorry, Penn Central locos, not New Haven. Also you’re correct, I’d forgotten it wasn’t a single unit, it was a lash-up. Also you post is more accurate than mine about the exact point where the lead loco stopped.
If we’re going to be like totally exact, I could be totally exact about your post. At the time the Southeast Expressway didn’t have a shield number. The Route 93 designation came later. I never understood why in a state where dinky roads had a route number a major expressway didn’t.
It’s not unique, though. The Davison Freeway in Detroit and Highland Park, now the M-8 Freeway, didn’t have a route number for its first decades. The STH 119 Freeway in Milwaukee had a route number on maps but had no shields on the road or on guide signs until thirty years after it was built.
Thank God he did not put that unit in the water.What a recovery project that would have been
Charles,
It wasn’t a NH engine nor even an ex-NH engine. It was several Penn Central units, with the lead unit a GP38 #3182, that ran off the end of the track in 1969 (with no one on board) and got most of the way across I-93 in Boston.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/penn-central-train-blocks-most-of-the-northbound-lane-of-news-photo/578956102
The trailing units were GE U-boats (not ex-NH either).
Steven Holte – Well, be my age (73) and be a Bay State native as I am, you’d know how far a locomotive can go off the track. In Boston in 1968 or 1969, an idling New Haven locomotive decided to take itself for a ride. It gathering speed through the South Boston yard. After the track ended, it kept going through a fence, across a street, through another fence, and across all northbound lanes of the Southeast Expressway at the MassAve interchange.
With the southbound lanes of the expressway higher in elevation, thus a stepped median, the locomotive came to a stop.
Evidently this was the summer as I was home from college in Michigan. Leaving downtown Boston and riding home with my family to Quincy (driving on the southbound side of the expressway) we saw the locomotive parked across the northbound lanes.
What are the odds of a locomotive going a mile or two through a yard and not hitting anything, nor was there any sort of derail at the track’s end.
White ” hospital” ship- check, White FEMA rail cars with shackles- check, Black helicopters ready- check! By god the tin foil hats are ready! Charge!
I would have never thought it possible that a locomotive could go that far if I hadn’t seen the pictures on Facebook. That must have been one hell of a ride.