Commuter train derails in Japan, killing 57

AMAGASAKI, Japan -- A packed commuter train that was behind schedule and may have been speeding jumped the tracks Monday and hurtled into an apartment complex, killing 57 people and injuring 440.\nInvestigators focused on whether excessive speed or the actions of the inexperienced, 23-year-old driver caused the crash in an urban area near Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo. The driver overshot the last station before the wreck, and a crew member and several passengers speculated the train was speeding to make up time.\nFloodlights were trained on one of the worst-damaged cars as rescuers tried to free at least three people still alive in the wreckage more than 11 hours after the 9:18 a.m. crash, said Yoshiki Nishiyama of the Amagasaki fire department.\nThe fate of the driver was unknown.\nThe seven-car commuter train was carrying 580 passengers when it derailed, wrecking a car in its path before slamming into the parking garage of a nine-story apartment building. Two of the five derailed cars were flattened against the building, and hundreds of rescuers and police swarmed the wreckage and tended to the injured.\n"There was a violent shaking, and the next moment I was thrown to the floor ... and I landed on top of a pile of other people," passenger Tatsuya Akashi told NHK. "I didn't know what happened, and there were many people bleeding."\nPhotos taken by an NHK reporter aboard the train showed passengers piled on the floor and some clawing to escape.\nPolice official Hiroshi Yamatani said the death toll had hit 57, with at least 440 people taken to hospitals, including 137 with broken bones and other serious injuries.\nIt was not clear how many of the dead were passengers or if bystanders and apartment residents were among the victims.\nDistraught relatives rushed to hospitals Monday to search lists of the injured and dead. Takamichi Hayashi said his older brother, 19-year-old Hiroki, had called their mother on a cell phone from one of the cars just after the crash but remained unaccounted for. He had heard Hiroki was among the four whom rescuers were trying to free.\nTsunemi Murakami, safety director for train operator West Japan Railway Co., estimated that the train would have had to be going 82 mph to have jumped the track purely because of excessive speed, and the crash happened at a curve that required the driver to slow to 43 mph.\nMurakami said it still was not certain how fast the train was going. A crew member aboard told police later he "felt the train was going faster than usual," NHK said, echoing comments from survivors interviewed by the network that the driver seemed to be trying to make up for lost time after overshooting the previous station by 25 feet and having to back up.\nThe train was nearly 2 minutes behind schedule, media reports said.\nInvestigators also found evidence of rocks on the tracks, but hadn't determined whether that contributed to the crash, he said.