Home » Latest » Breaking News » Man intentionally derailed train near hospital ship

Man intentionally derailed train near hospital ship

3

InfoSearched 52 0 Breaking News

6.7

SaveSavedRemoved 0

A Los Angeles train engineer tried to ram a Navy hospital ship with a speeding locomotive — and told federal agents exactly why.

Federal prosecutors say Eduardo Moreno, 44, deliberately derailed a Pacific Harbor Line train at the Port of Los Angeles on March 31, 2020, in a bid to crash into the USNS Mercy, the 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship sent to relieve Southern California hospitals during the coronavirus outbreak. Moreno drove the locomotive at high speed off the end of the track, through concrete and steel barriers, across a roadway and through a chain-link fence before the train finally stopped roughly 250 yards short of the docked vessel. No one was hurt and the Mercy itself was untouched, but the wreck ruptured the engine’s fuel tank and triggered a hazmat cleanup of the spilled diesel.

• Moreno faces one federal count of train wrecking under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, which carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
• According to federal affidavits filed April 1, 2020, Moreno admitted he acted alone and intentionally derailed the train to draw media attention to the ship.
• He told investigators he suspected the USNS Mercy had “an alternative agenda” or was connected to a government takeover, despite the ship’s actual mission of taking non-COVID patients off local hospitals’ hands.

Timeline of the Train Derailment

The Pacific Harbor Line engine Moreno was operating had no business heading toward open track past its terminus. Investigators say he pushed the train well beyond the end of the line, plowing through the barriers meant to stop exactly this kind of runaway before crossing a public roadway and tearing through a fence. The locomotive came to rest about 250 yards from the Mercy — close enough to underline how much worse the outcome could have been, but far enough that the ship suffered no damage.

The collision did rupture the train’s fuel tank, sending diesel across the site and forcing a hazardous materials response. Given the derailment happened at an active port during a public health emergency, authorities treated the cleanup and the criminal investigation as parallel priorities from the outset.

Moreno’s Objectives for Targeting Hospital

Federal affidavits laid out Moreno’s own account: he wanted the derailment to draw press coverage to the USNS Mercy because he believed the ship’s presence in Los Angeles harbor was not what officials were saying it was. He suspected it was tied to a broader government takeover rather than its stated purpose of easing the load on hospitals treating coronavirus patients across the region.

Moreno told investigators he suspected the hospital ship had “an alternative agenda” tied to a government takeover.

That belief, prosecutors say, is what led him to intentionally run the train off the tracks rather than any mechanical failure or accident. The Mercy had arrived in Los Angeles as part of the broader federal response to the pandemic, a deployment that unfolded alongside a wave of state and local actions detailed in coverage of emerging findings about the virus’s spread and shifting projections for the outbreak’s toll.

The Federal Case Against Moreno

Prosecutors charged Moreno with one count of train wrecking, a charge that carries a statutory maximum of 20 years in federal prison. The single charge reflects the specific federal statute covering intentional derailments rather than a terrorism-related charge, even though the target was a military vessel supporting the pandemic response.

The timing placed the case squarely in the early, chaotic weeks of the U.S. outbreak, when hospital capacity was the central worry driving decisions from Sacramento to Washington — the same backdrop that shaped debates like those covered in states imposing stricter coronavirus restrictions as case counts climbed.

Moreno’s case now heads through the federal court system in the Central District of California, where prosecutors will need to prove he acted with the intent authorities say he confessed to. His own admission that he acted alone and wanted media coverage of the ship gives them the core of their argument before a jury ever hears the case.