4th Body Found in Train Crash Rubble

By Bert Case
bert@wlbt.net

Train traffic has been restored in the area near Bentonia, where a head on collision between two freight trains Sunday morning took four lives. And now, the bodies of all four victims have been found.

Despite an hour long delay for the southbound City of New Orleans passenger train Tuesday morning, just north of Yazoo City, Amtrak train service to and from Jackson is now restored. (It was terminated since last Saturday evening.)

Most of the debris from the Sunday morning collision has now been moved away from the restored track at the accident site.

Debbie Hersman, National Transportation Safety Board member, said parts of three event recorders were recovered.  "What we wanna do is make sure that the signals were working properly and that the crew observed them. We wanna understand why this accident occurred and prevent it from happening again."

She did not identify the crew members who perished in the accident but did give this description of them. "The northbound train engineer was 58 years old, hired in 1969. The conductor was also 58, he has hired in 1968, the southbound engineer was 51 years old, hired in 1973. The south bound conductor was 21 years old hired in 2002."

We have confirmed from family members, the young conductor was Shannon Purvis, from Puckett, Mississippi. The south bound engineer was 52 year old Mark Cain of Kosciusko.

WLBT has learned the other two victims are from Jackson and Lena, Mississippi, but officials have not released their names.

The southbound train was supposed to go into that siding at Anding. For some reason it ran a red stop signal and for some reason did not enter the siding, which caused if to collide with the north bound train. It will probably be a year before we know why.