In the first interview, just three days after the May 12 derailment, Bostian recalled few details, saying his last memory was passing the North Philadelphia Amtrak station, before he came to after the train was off the track. He was treated for a concussion and received 14 stitches in his head, as well as some in his knee, according to court documents.

During a second interview in November 2015, Bostian said, “a couple of prominent scenes … came back” from that night, although they were “dreamlike” and he said he couldn’t be sure if he was confusing them with other times he rode the same route.

This time he remembered accelerating in a straight away right before the curve. The speed limit was 80 mph, but he said he had been going 70, and so he increased his speed.

In another disconnected memory, Bostian said he tried to brake two different ways when he realized he was going too fast in the curve, according to his statements to investigators.

When that failed, he said he remembered thinking, “Ok, well this is it.”

Bostian’s sworn statements add his own words to arguments by the defense that he was distracted by radio calls from a SEPTA engineer whose windshield had been shattered by a projectile shortly before the crash. Bostian told investigators he was “a little bit concerned” for his own safety, but “I was really concerned for the SEPTA engineer,” because he had a coworker when he worked in California who got glass in his eye from a similar incident.

In the aftermath of the crash, authorities and Amtrak took blood and urine samples from Bostian, to determine if he was under the influence. They also investigated his phone records. The toxicology report came back clean and his phone was powered off prior to the crash, Julien testified.

However, prosecutors sought to introduce the possibility that he may have been distracted by a different device.