Cleaning Woman Steals And Crashes Commuter Train In Sweden

Swedish authorities are searching for answers as to how and why a cleaning lady would steal a commuter train which she derailed into an apartment building. According to transit officials, the woman stole the train from a station near Stockholm and drove it for three minutes around 3 a.m. on Tuesday. 

"The woman started driving the train from the Neglinge train station, which is two stops from Saltsjöbaden, and usually a three-minute ride. The train usually goes at about 10 kilometres an hour in this area, but we estimate that she was going at about 70 kilometres per hour," said SL spokesman Jesper Pettersson according to The Local.

A spokesman for Stockholm County's transit, operator Storstockholms Lokaltrafik, described the woman as being in her twenties.  He said the she drove it for two stops before hitting the ground floor of an apartment building in the suburbs of Saltsjöbaden.  No one was killed, but the woman was trapped in the wreckage for two hours and rushed to the hospital.  Reports say that she suffered "serious" injuries.

Police spokesman Ulf Lindgren said it was a miracle that no one inside of the building was hurt. "It's incredibly lucky that no one in the house was injured," he said. "The head of the emergency services crew has ordered the house to be evacuated for safety reasons." 

Officials have launched an investigation to review how an unauthorized person was able to access the commuter train.  But as far as driving the train, officials say that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to operate it. A spokesman for the subcontractor that operates the train line, said, "Generally speaking that's possible even if you're not a train driver. You can read about it on the Internet, or observe how others do it."