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The scene of the 2019 derailment.
Former Long Island Rail Road employee Stuart Conklin, 66, currently of Magnolia, Texas, pleaded guilty in federal court on December 6 to charges that he filed a false railroad safety report.
Conklin filed the report in April 2019 — and a month later, a westbound LIRR train collided with an eastbound train in Speonk, leading to a derailment of one of the trains.
Conklin was an LIRR signalman whose responsibilities included inspecting so-called “rail bonds,” described by the U.S. Department of Justice in a statement attending his guilty plea as “electronic bumpers around joints in the rails of a railroad track to ensure continuity of conductivity for signal currents.”
On April 26, 2019, Conklin “falsely indicated in an inspection report that he had inspected a particular rail bond in Speonk,” said the DOJ, and that it had passed inspection.
Video footage showed that he never inspected the rail bond during his shift, and cellphone data showed that he was, in fact, at his former residence in Ronkonkoma during his shift.
An investigation following the collision and derailment found that the rail bond was broken and was the cause of the signal malfunction and the derailment. The break meant it looked like the eastbound train was clear to proceed because it didn’t show a westbound train was in the way.
Conklin resigned six days after the crash, which left the East End without train service for two days over Memorial Day weekend that year.
In announcing the guilty plea, Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said that while nobody was seriously injured when the trains collided, “it is a stark reminder of the importance federal oversight plays in the safety and integrity of our transportation system.”
Conklin was charged with violating a section of Title 49 of the U.S. Code that requires proper record-keeping and “did knowingly and willfully make a false entry in a record or report” required under the code, according to the initial criminal complaint lodged in March 2021. He faces up to two years in prison and will be sentenced in May.
“Anyone choosing to intentionally ignore federal laws and requirements put in place to ensure the safety of the traveling public will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law,” said Christopher Sharf, special agent in charge with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
