BERLIN — A railway dispatcher apparently caused the deadly collision of two trains in the German state of Bavaria on Feb. 9 because he was playing a game on his cellphone until just before the accident, according to state prosecutors.
Eleven people died, and 80 were injured, some seriously, in the crash, which occurred on a single-track stretch of railway near Bad Aibling in Bavaria, about 35 miles southeast of Munich. A week later, the state prosecutor Wolfgang Giese said that the dispatcher, identified only as a 39-year-old man, had violated work rules and had most likely caused the crash.
On Tuesday, Giese issued a warrant for the dispatcher's arrest. He is expected to be charged with involuntary manslaughter, as well as violating work rules.
"The latest investigation shows that, in violation of the railway work rules, the accused switched on his mobile phone during his shift on the morning of the accident, started an online computer game and played actively for an extended period of time until shortly before the collision," Giese said in a statement.
"On the basis of the timing, one must assume that the attention of the accused was diverted from regulating the traffic" on the railway, the statement added. "Because of this distraction, the accused made some false assumptions about where the trains might cross, gave the wrong signals to the trains and entered a false combination for an emergency call to the trains, so that the drivers never heard those signals."
The dispatcher admitted to having played a game, but he told a court in Rosenheim on Tuesday that his attention had not been diverted, the statement said.
Bjorn Pfeifer, a spokesman for the state prosecutor in Traunstein, said that officials would not make any further statements Wednesday.
The trains and the track involved in the February crash were fitted with an automatic brake system that was introduced in Germany after 10 people died in a similar rail accident in 2011.
Much of Germany's extensive rail system has single-track sections. The Bad Aibling crash occurred on a bend in a wooded area beside a canal that would have prevented the train drivers from establishing visual contact before the accident. Both trains were traveling around 60 mph when the crash occurred.