Probe: Train driver was on the phone

MADRID, Spain - The driver of the train that derailed and killed 79 people in Spain was on the phone with a rail official and traveling at 95 m.p.h. - almost twice the speed limit - when the crash happened last week, according to a preliminary investigation released Tuesday.

The train had been going as fast as 119 m.p.h. shortly before the derailment, and the driver activated the brakes "seconds before the crash," according to a written statement from the court in Santiago de Compostela, whose investigators gleaned the information from two "black box" data recorders recovered from the train.

The speed limit on that part of track was 50 m.p.h.

The crash, the country's worst in decades, occurred near Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. In all, 66 people are still hospitalized, 15 in critical condition.

The driver, Francisco Jose Garzon Amo, was talking on the phone to an official of the national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time, the statement said. Garzon was provisionally charged Sunday with multiple counts of negligent homicide.

The driver received a call on his work phone in the cabin, not his personal cellphone, to tell him what approach to take toward his final destination. The Renfe employee on the telephone "appears to be a controller," the statement said.

"From the contents of the conversation and from the background noise it seems that the driver [was] consulting a plan or similar paper document," the statement said.

The train was carrying 218 passengers when it hurtled off the tracks last Wednesday evening.