An employee in my husband's office was one of the people on the train...no one has heard from her directly, but they understand that she was one of the many who were hospitalized.

It is a very sad situation. I don't know that I can pass judgement on this person. I too understand what mental issues can do to a person and that regardless of the horrific outcome the person is truely just not equipped mentally to think their actions thru and what the consequneces could be.

That being said, I don't think a defense will have much luck here, because his actions in trying to get the SUV off the tracks will show that he had a minimal mental capacity to know at some point in all of this, that what he was doing was wrong.

Devil's Advocate...
 

Or, the guy just wanted to save his Jeep. I doubt he was really thinking clearly.

I'm truly sorry people were injured and killed, but a murder charge seems ridiculous to me! Think back on how many news spots you've seen about train. v. automobile incidents...Usually, the score is Train:1, Car:0. I'm sure the guy had THOSE stats in mind when he considered this form of suicide. It was an anomoly that the Jeep was positioned in such a way as to cause such damage -- investigators have already said as much. Sooo, in my opinion, manslaughter - yes, murder w/ special circumstance - no.

I'm not convinced that was not his plan- he could not successfully kill himself, so he may be glad for someone to do it for him. Similar to suicide by police.

I called my mom today. She's the mom who, whenever she's sees the words "orange" and "county" in the same article, even if it's about orange ice cream at the county fair in Nebraska, calls me to make sure I'm still alive. But today she says, "Remind me how far you are from Jeffrey and the 5." We happen to live one block away from there. She says, "Oh, then did you hear about the copy cat who parked his car on the Metrolink tracks there?" No, I hadn't but that did explain the two news vans I saw parked near the tracks on the way home from work. Of course, this all happened at 4AM, a guy parked, with the intent to commit suicide, but someone saw it and called 911. All of this was cleared by the time I drove past it at 7:30 AM on the way TOO work. Leave it to the TV news to not be there until 12 hours after anything is actually happening.

Of course, if the guy who did it in Glendale is being charged with murder, should this guy be charged with attempted murder?

Wow, I hadn't heard about that incident. One of my first thoughts after the Glendale accident was whether there might be copycats, especially considering the amount of coverage that Glendale got.

A follow-up in this case... looks like he just got handed his sentence today: Life.

Now THAT may be the most ironic of all.

Actually, yeah. That's pretty darn ironic. I hope he gets to spend several months of it in a paper gown.

Thanks for the update. I find it interesting that the article you posted was from the BBC.

11 consecutive life sentences. When he dies, they bring him back to life and move on to the next life sentence.