Metrolink trial moves forward

LOS ANGELES — A retired Glendale police officer testified in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday that there was very little evidence suggesting that Juan Manuel Alvarez tried to reverse off of train tracks minutes before a train slammed into his Jeep Cherokee, a claim central to his defense in connection with the January 2005 train wreck that left 11 dead and nearly 200 others injured.

Matthew Gunnell — who helped investigate the Jan. 26, 2005, crash in which a Metrolink train struck Alvarez’s SUV, derailing and smashed two other trains — told attorneys that he did not find much evidence to support claims that Alvarez tried to back off the train tracks that run perpendicular to Chevy Chase Drive, along the Glendale and Los Angeles border.

During more than three hours of testimony Wednesday, Gunnell told attorneys that most of the debris, or spray, made by Alvarez’s tires on the morning of Jan. 26 was found on the east side of the train tracks, supporting the prosecution’s contentions that the car was not moving backward.

“The difference between the obvious impressions to the east and west were large,” said Gunnell, who left the Glendale Police Department on May 2 due to an injury to his left hand he sustained while mountain-biking. “In my mind, the spray that was necessary to document specifically was to the east.”

The issue of whether Alvarez reversed is central to defense attorney’s claims that their client tried to move his car off the tracks that morning, an apparent abdication of his alleged suicide plan that morning, defense attorney Thomas Kielty said

“This issue of the car getting off the track is very, very important to this case,” he said.

But Gunnell and other officers at the scene did not find dirt sprayed from Alvarez’s tires on the west side of the tracks, which would have demonstrated his attempted reversal, saying that dirt already on the west side of the tracks may have been there before.

Alvarez, 29, sat quietly Wednesday dressed in a plaid shirt and beige pants flanked by his two attorneys. His trial comes more than three years after the incident in which he was charged with 11 counts of murder with special circumstances and one count each of train wrecking and arson, charges that could carry a penalty of death if he is convicted.