After 72 hours, the Police have released the identity of the driver that slammed into the Amtrak train. The delay was so the family could be notified lawyers could be hired.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/27/BA461K37NM.DTL&ao=2
43 year old Lawrence Ruben Valli has a long history of moving violations, including 3 for speeding in the last 3 years. One of the violations was for having a cell phone is his hand while driving. He had recently moved from California and gotten a Nevada driver’s license. He had preiously surrendered his CDL. Several of those speeding tickets were wwhile driving a schoolbus. He has more tickets in his driving history, but the states are only allowed to dislose those in the past three years. He had received his CDL from Nevada in May and had been living in a boarding house.
His mom says the Lawrence was a good boy.
One other small detail – with the two cars ablaze, one of the Amtrak conductors (despite being injured himself) was able to go under the cars and disconnect the couplers and close the air line so that the the burning cars could be moved far enough away from the rest of the train to keep the fire from spreading to them.
So here is my next question, being a curious guy.
It was 11:45 am local time, and he is reported to be “half done” with his shift, indicating he was working a normal work day. His truck was headed North, 4 miles from I-80. The trucking company he worked for is on I80, about 100 miles to the west – in a place called Battle Mountain.
The stories strongly suggest this company is busy because of increase in gold mining activity in NE Nevada. Here is a list of active gold mines in that area:
http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/dox/mm/mm97/mm97.htm#elko
There are two located in Elko, which is on I-80 about half way between where they were and the trucking company. The other company is in Ely, which is where they were coming from.
So my question is – why were the trucks empty? What had they been carrying and where did they take it? It would make some sense if they were picking up ore from the desert and taking it to a smelting center.
http://www.yukon-nevadagold.com/s/JerrittCanyon.asp?ReportID=190740
That’s the most likely gold mine.
or
http://www.animasresources.com/s/KinsleyMountain.asp
Kinsley Mountain is near the road they were on down close to Ely. If they were just going for lunch.
I didn’t hear George Knapp Monday morning, but a person who did suggests that there may be some questionable things going on in the gold business in Nevada.
From the news story: …the driver’s family defended him Monday, saying he would have done all he could to stop the truck and save lives if he could.
“I just know he had to have known that the truck wasn’t going to stop in a football field and he could have jumped out.” said Delone Yu of Chino, Calif., nephew
Apparently, it didn’t occur to him to take his foot off the brake and turn the truck off-road into the wide open desert sand… which also might have stopped him more quickly.
With regard to questionable things going on in the gold mining biz… you betcha! Part of the problem is Department of Interior – BLM (Bureua of Land Mismanagment)… just look at their wild horse ‘euthanization’ (starvation) plan.
Might be interesting to take residue samples from the truck trailers… perhaps some illegal dumping going on? Gold mining can create some nasty chemical waste issues.
I have two basic theories, but not knowing much about the topic…
One is the thing you suggested… that they were returning from dumping gold mine tailings out in the desert somewhere. Refining gold (from my brief reading) usually involves mercury or cyanide to dissolve the gold out of the rock, both of which you don’t want in your back yard.
My more cynical theory (and less obvious) is they were taking gold ore from a real mine and “salting” a phony gold mine. Dropping ore onto land that has no gold to get an assay report saying a mine has gold in it when it doesn’t – to form the basis of an investment scam. This is not unheard of in the gold stock business.