A “DERANGED” man who tried to commit suicide by parking his Jeep across a commuter railway line escaped yesterday, but caused the deaths of at least ten people in a multiple train collision.

Police said that the driver, Juan Manuel Alvarez, 25, had slashed his wrists and stabbed himself in the chest shortly before parking his Jeep Cherokee on the tracks.

But he jumped clear at the last moment and watched as two high-speed trains collided and derailed in a fiery wreck, injuring nearly 200 passengers.

He was found wandering the scene after the accident, muttering: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Police said that he would be charged with at least ten counts of murder.

One commuter train was travelling from Union Station in Los Angeles to Burbank. The second was travelling towards Union Station from the suburb of Moorpark. The collision — at 6am local time — happened in the northern Los Angeles district of Glendale.

Randy Adams, Chief of Glendale Police, said that that Mr Alvarez had admitted parking on the tracks with the intention of killing himself, but had changed his mind and fled as one of the commuter trains bore down on his Jeep. “He was distraught and upset and realised that he caused a major disaster,” Mr Adams said.

He described the suspect as a “deranged individual” and said that he had a record of prior drug-related arrests, but police knew little else of his background.

The train hit a second commuter train and both were derailed. Some carriages overturned, sending passengers tumbling down the aisles.

In light rain, almost 300 firefighters picked through twisted wreckage and carried wounded passengers to a nearby car park, where 35 ambulances were waiting to ferry them to hospitals. Rescuers used ladders to climb up to the windows of carriages lying on their side.

Firefighters found bleeding passengers walking dazed amid twisted wreckage and scattered belongings. Some survivors pushed others in shopping trolleys from a nearby shop.

Diane Brady, a 56-year-old passenger, said: “I heard a noise. It got louder and louder and next thing I knew the train tilted, everyone was screaming and I held on to a pole for dear life. I held on for what seemed like a week and a half. It was a complete nightmare.”

Carol Smith, 50, was on her way to work in the city and had just put down her newspaper and was starting to meditate. “And all of a sudden, the train pulls the brakes and jerks and the lights went out,” Ms Smith said. She was able to walk off unscathed, although she saw a number of severe injuries. “I walked by a lot of people who were lying on the tracks and couldn’t move,” she said.

George Touma, 19, said that he had been called by his mother, who was on one of the trains. “She told me she was bleeding in the head and her arm was really hurting,” Mr Touma said as he searched for his mother.

“I’m really worried because she has vertigo and when I tried to call back she wouldn’t answer.” He said that she told him of hearing “sequential loud noises and then somebody pulled her out of the train while it was burning”.

The trains were operated by Metrolink. As one tumbled off the tracks, it struck a third train that was parked, tipping it on to its side.

Metrolink began service in 1992 and operates seven lines in Southern California. On January 6, a freight train derailed at Graniteville, sending up a toxic cloud of chlorine gas from a damaged carriage.

Nine people were killed and 250 were injured in that accident, and thousands were forced to leave their homes.

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