More railway employees to face prosecutors over deadly crash

Two more stationmasters and a railway company inspector will face prosecutors during the coming week over the February 28 rail disaster that claimed 57 lives.

Authorities are investigating whether the two, a contractor and a veteran staff member of Hellenic Railways, left before their shift was over, leaving an inexperienced colleague to steer two trains running in opposite directions on the same track, resulting in a head-on collision.

Both were employed in the Larissa train station, an important rail hub in central Greece, just south of the site of the accident.

The contractor will be deposited Monday; he is said to have claimed he did not leave his shift early; his shift ended at 10 p.m. on the night of February 28, and he left at 10.15 p.m., he has said.

The more experienced staff member will face an examining magistrate and a prosecutor Tuesday; he is said to have admitted that he left his shift before it ended, at 11 p.m., but that, even if he had stayed, he could not have prevented the tragedy, as the northbound passenger train pulled at the Larissa station at 11.02 p.m. The collision with a southbound freight train occurred at 11.21 p.m.

A Hellenic Railways inspector will also face authorities on Thursday. According to sources, he will submit an 80-page memoir in his defense, claiming that he had suggested the presence of at least two stationmasters at Larissa until 11 p.m.

The stationmaster who made the fatal decision to steer the two trains in the same track, a 59-year-old only had days on the job, after undergoing five months of training, starting in August 2022. Formerly a porter with Hellenic Railways at Larissa, he had been transferred to a desk job at a local Ministry of Education office in 2011, as part of layoffs in the train company demanded by Greece’s creditors as part of a negotiated aid package. In 2022, he had applied, and was accepted, for a transfer back to the railways company as a trainee stationmaster. He has now been charged with multiple counts of negligent homicide and bodily injury, which are misdemeanors, as well as compromising transport safety, a felony potentially carrying a life sentence. 

The examining magistrate and a prosecutor will decide whether to press the same charges on the other two stationmasters and the inspector after their testimony.

[Kathimerini/AMNA]