As news develops of just how big the toll was in Tuesday’s Philadelphia Amtrak train derailment, more names were revealed of the seven crash victims on Wednesday evening.
Rachel Jacobs, 39, a chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based education technology company ApprenNet, had lost her life during the wreck. Although she works in Philadelphia, she was returning home to New York, where she lives with her husband and two-year-old son.
Abid Gilani, 55, a senior vice president of Wells Fargo, was also confirmed to be among the dead. He was attending a funeral of his uncle in Virginia, along with his mother from Toronto, a cousin told the New York Daily News. Gilani had recently moved to Walnut Creek, Calif. with his wife while his children attended college in the West Coast. He traveled each week for work to New York and would come back home to California on weekends.
Derrick Griffith, 42, a dean of student affairs and enrollment management at Brooklyn-based Medgar Evers College, was also among the crash victims. The college released a statement, describing Griffith as a “pillar to the community.”
“He served the students of Medgar Evers and the greater community with passion and he will be sorely missed,” the college stated in a release. “He was a champion for the downtrodden and he encouraged students to pursue education with vigor.”
After two days, fewer than a dozen people remain unaccounted for, according to reports. Bob Gildersleeve, 45, a father of two and vice president of sales at Ecolab, is still among the missing.
The attorneys at Morgan Levine Dolan have represented many people injured in mass transit accidents. During the early stages of the investigation, it is imperative to get private attorneys involved in the process. Too many times, the mass transit carrier performs the investigation and many pieces of evidence are either tampered with or ignored.
We have recovered millions of dollars for our injured clients. If a loved one has been injured or killed in a train accident, contact Jared Levine of Morgan Levine Dolan at 212-785-5115 today.
