Temple Prof In Amtrak Wreck: 'I Was Thrown Across The Aisle' While On Phone With Wife

By DANIEL HUBBARD

Duy Nguyen, 39, was talking to his wife on the phone last Tuesday when he noticed the train tilted strangely to one side. Then disaster occurred.

“I was thrown across the aisle to the right bank of seats,” Nguyen, a Teaneck resident and Temple University professor, told NorthJersey.com. “Seats were being dislodged. Cushions blew around, and I knew that my back and legs hurt.”

Eight people died and more than 200 were injured when the Amtrak train went into a turn at an estimated 106 miles per hour and derailed.

The engineer at the center of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) investigation of the deadly derailment did not reveal to investigators that the train might have been hit by a foreign object, officials said.

“We interviewed the dispatchers and we listened to the dispatch tape, and we heard no communications at all from the Amtrak engineer to the dispatch center to say that something had struck the train,” NTSB investigator Robert Sumwalk told ABC and CNN.

The engineer, Brandon Bostian, told investigators he doesn’t remember what happened leading up to the crash.

Nguyen sustained a deep cut in his head that was bleeding, and he knew he had to get off the train to get treatment, according to northjersey.com. He also said:

“I was sitting in the last car of the train toward the back, so I managed to exit the train rather quickly ... Through good fortune, that’s also around the section where the Philadelphia police officers cut through and came upon me fairly early on. I would think I was one of the initial ones that arrived in the ER at Temple University Hospital.”

Once off the train, Nguyen borrowed a cellphone and called his wife to let her know he had survived. He got eight sutures in his head and suffered three fractured vertebrae, and then was released from the hospital last Wednesday, according to the report.

Nguyen is an associate professor at Temple University’s School of Social Work. He had his laptop open when he felt the train jerk, according to philly.com.

“The next thing I know we’re sliding and falling to the right side of the train. I went clear across the other seat, the aisle and into the other side. And the lights cut out...,” said Nguyen, according to philly.com.

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Photo courtesy of NTSB