HYDER, Arizona -- A passenger train carrying 267 people derailed Monday in the Arizona desert, killing one person and injuring more than 100 in what authorities said could have been a deliberate sabotage attack.
"We have evidence it was not an accident -- it could be terrorist activity," Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio told reporters.
Officials said an electrical cord had been found wrapped around the tracks at the site of the derailments and notes had been found at the site where the Amtrak train crashed en route from Miami to Los Angeles carrying 248 passengers.
The derailment occurred at 1:30 p.m., local time, as the train crossed a bridge near the small town of Hyder, 95 kilometers southwest of Phoenix.
Arpaio declined to say to whom the notes were addressed, but when asked if one of the addressees was the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, he replied, "You're close."
The notes were signed by an unknown group called, "Sons of the Gestapo."
The BATF has become the lightning rod of virulent anti-government hatred among several para-military right-wing groups and some Republican members of Congress, who decry what they call the agency's heavy-handed tactics in enforcing federal gun laws.
Arpaio would not discuss the electrical wire in detail, but added, "The track has been tampered with."
The train's engineer reported seeing something on the track and tried desperately to bring the train to a halt.
When the 12-car train jumped the track, a diner and two sleeping cars fell nine meters into a steep gorge, officials said. Most of those sustaining critical injuries, 30 in all, including several elderly people, were in the these cars.
"We were both awakened at the same time by this violent shaking,'' an unidentified passenger told KTVK-TV in Phoenix. "Then it began to slowly tilt as it was moving and shaking and suddenly -- boom.''
The scene could be reached by road by four-wheel-drive vehicles only with difficulty. The rescue was carried out almost entirely by air.
It appeared the locomotives had made it across the bridge when the derailment occurred.
The train sat with the engines upright, one car behind them tilting toward the streambed and the next three cars lying in the bed, with little visible damage. The remaining cars sat upright on the far side of the streambed.
A triage center was set up on sandy desert soil next to a dirt road about 10 kilometers from the accident scene. Medical personnel in lab coats bustled alongside military units in camouflage as helicopters landed nearby with injured passengers. A fire truck sprayed the landing pad with water in an attempt to control dust whipped up by the choppers.
"We've got helicopters from all over the state, including the military. They're bringing all the patients out to the landing zone, where they're being transferred to various ambulances,'' said Sergeant Tim Campbell of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. "We have every kind of life-threatening injury you can imagine."
One crew member was pronounced dead on the scene, said Norman Jones, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
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