Stockholm train crashed into apartments by cleaner

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

A video news report, from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Footage shows the train wedged in the building, as Rebecca Donovan reports

A cleaning woman stole an empty commuter train in a suburb of Stockholm and crashed it into a house, injuring herself, Swedish officials say.

The four-carriage train was driven out of the depot for about a mile until it jumped the tracks, becoming wedged into a three-storey building.

Police arrested a woman, who was flown to a Stockholm hospital with serious injuries. Nobody else was hurt.

A railway official confirmed the woman in custody was an employee.

"We have only heard good things about her," Tomas Hedenius, a spokesman for train operator Arriva, was quoted as saying by AP news agency. "We're investigating how this could happen."

Three families were inside the apartment building hit by the train but nobody was injured, the spokesman added.

"It's incredibly lucky that no-one in the house was injured," police spokesman Ulf Lindgren told TT news agency.

Christer G Wennerholm, a member of the Stockholm County Council's traffic committee, said: "It shouldn't be possible for unauthorised people to drive our trains."

[Chris from Nailsea]

An update on this story, from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Swedish cleaner not to blame for train crash


Police guarded the scene after the crash

A cleaning lady accused of commandeering an empty Swedish commuter train which crashed into a house did not steal the vehicle, officials say.

Prosecutors in the capital, Stockholm, said that they had closed the criminal case against the woman, who sustained serious injuries in the accident. They said they now believe she started the vehicle by accident as she was cleaning it in the middle of the night. The woman had initially been accused of stealing the train.

On Friday, the prosecutor said the cleaner was no longer suspected of wrongdoing. "Everything suggests it was a pure accident where several temporary and unfortunate circumstances caused the woman to set the train in motion when she was cleaning," Paer Andersson said in a statement, according to AFP news agency.

No-one was hurt in the building which was hit when the train came off its tracks in the early hours of Tuesday in the suburb of Saltsjoebaden.

The train operating companies, Arriva and SL, may now face an investigation into a possible breach of safety laws.

A spokesman for Arriva said it was unfortunate that the woman, who was detained in hospital on suspicion of destroying public property, had been described as a thief.

[Electric train]

Their trains obviously missing a lot of sophisticated control and security systems ............. like a key