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Gay Metrolink train engineer faced challenges in final years
Personal tragedies may have led to head on collision that killed 25
Published Thursday, 25-Sep-2008 in issue 1083
LOS ANGELES (AP) – In the years leading up to his death in the locomotive of Metrolink 111, engineer Robert Sanchez’s life was marked by personal tragedy, jail time and concerns about his health and job security.
His HIV-positive partner had committed suicide, he was concerned about his diabetes and he feared a brush with the law that could end the career he loved.
The National Transportation Safety Board is looking at Sanchez’s background after determining human error and not mechanical or equipment failure was likely to blame for the Sept 12. collision with a Union Pacific freight that killed 25 people, including Sanchez, and injured 135 others.
The NTSB is examining the training, efficiency, personnel and medical records of Sanchez to determine why he blew through a red signal and failed to hit the brakes on Metrolink 111.
“We’re not just limiting ourselves to the schedule he worked that day,” National Transportation Safety Board member Kitty Higgins said. “We walk it back to see whether there was anything else that might be of significance in looking at the whole picture.”
In addition to examining what Sanchez did moments before the collision – including text messages sent from his cell phone while on duty that day – investigators plan to look at his background and what he was doing in the days before the accident.
NTSB experts will look at his work, sleep, rest and eating patterns in the three days leading up to the crash, said Ronald Schleede, a former NTSB investigator who once headed a division specializing in human performance in transportation accidents.
That could lead to a deeper investigation and interviews with the engineer’s peers, families and look at various records.
“It’s not an easy thing to do, you can’t put yourself in someone else’s head, you can’t really put yourself there and think what this person was thinking or see what this person was seeing,” he said. “You can only deduce a little bit.”
Friends said Sanchez was a friendly man, who was private and quiet unless he was talking about the two things he loved: trains and dogs.
“He was very outgoing when it came to socializing in the environment we all knew him in, which was the dogs,” said Michelle Paulin, a professional dog handler who used to take Sanchez’s four Italian greyhounds to shows.
But he had his share of problems, starting with his guilty plea to misdemeanor grand theft in 2002 for stealing video game consoles from a store.
“One of his biggest concerns was how is this going to impact his career,” defense attorney Wilson Wong said of his client’s guilty plea. “He thought: ‘Could this cause my career to come to an end?’”
Months later, on Feb. 14, 2003, Sanchez’s partner, Daniel Burton, who was HIV-positive, hanged himself in the garage of the home they shared in Crestline, a San Bernardino Mountains community about 80 miles east of Los Angeles.
Neighbors said Sanchez was a recluse, saying little to them during the last year of his life. But friend and fellow dog breeder, Lilian Barber, remembered Sanchez as someone everyone seemed to like.
“He was always relentlessly upbeat. He always had a smile on his face,” Barber, 77, of Murrieta, said Wednesday.
The two became friends in 2004.
They both loved ethnic cuisine and started going out to lunch together almost once a week, where they’d talk about dogs, Sanchez’s work for Metrolink and the battle they both waged against diabetes.
“The problem with going to lunch with Rob was he would come back and talk to me and my husband for the rest of the day,” Barber said. “He was pretty lonely.”
Sanchez raved about his job for Metrolink, but worried he might lose it because of a lack of seniority.
Sanchez was working an 11 and a half-hour split shift at the time of the crash. He began his shift at 6 a.m. Sept. 12, took a nap during a 3 and a half-hour break and resumed duty at 2 p.m., about 2 and a half-hours before the crash, the NTSB said.
The two trains were only in each other’s view four to five seconds before the collision. While the Union Pacific engineer used his brakes about two seconds before impact, there’s no evidence Sanchez did, the NTSB found.
Sanchez’ body was picked up from the morgue by a private autopsy service, Forensic Autopsy Services, on Sept. 16, for a second autopsy, said Craig Harvey of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.
Attempts to reach Sanchez’s family have been unsuccessful.
Barber said Sanchez told her that he was from Nevada, where he grew up in a farming community and was involved with the 4-H Club as a child.
Barber said she never suspected that Sanchez was gay until he mentioned a couple of years ago that he had bought a house with a man named Daniel.
She last spoke with him eight months ago. He told her that he was on his way to meet her and wanted to go to lunch. She said she was too busy. He replied “that’s fine” and abruptly hung up.
“I never realized I probably knew him better than anybody else other than his family. I don’t think I knew him that well at all,” Barber said. “I’ve missed him for the last year, to tell you the truth, because I was so used to seeing him regularly.”
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