New Milford 9/11 Survivor On Hoboken Train: Car Was Like A 'Pancake': Report

The roof was right above Tahir Qureshi's head after the Pascack Valley Line train car he was in crashed in Hoboken Thursday.

The car was flat and resembled a "pancake," Qureshi said. The 42-year-old father of three said in a report on NorthJersey.com he was "thankful and blessed."

Qureshi is a 9/11 survivor. He was going into the south tower of the World Trade Center when it was hit by a plane, the report said. He was treated for a bruised knee at the hospital.

Fabiola Bittar De Kroon, a 34-year-old Hoboken woman who was standing on the station's platform, was struck and killed by debris as a result of the crash; 108 people received non-life-threatening injuries.

Alexis Valle, a 24-year-old Bergenfield resident who is five months pregnant, said in the report that she thought she was going to die. She was sitting near the front of the train.

"The train just didn't stop," she said in the report. "The ceiling fell on my head."

Photos from the scene show the mangled train car that crashed into the platform of Track 5. Passengers described people screaming and bloodied as they exited the train.

The National Transportation Safety Board said the engineer, Thomas Gallagher, 48, of Morris Plains, who was injured, hospitalized, and released Thursday, is cooperating with authorities in the investigation. He is expected to be interviewed on Friday.

PATH service resumed in Hoboken even though the century-old terminal will remain shut down for the foreseeable future, Port Authority officials said.

Gov. Chris Christie, who said the train "came in at a higher rate of speed than it should have," said the Office of the Attorney General also is investigating the crash.

Christie said the crash appeared to be a "tragic accident" that was not intentional or terror-related.

Read more: Hoboken NJ Train Crash Latest: Victim Identified, More Than 100 Injured

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Photo courtesy of John Tachine

With reporting by Tom Davis, Kara Seymour, and Eric Kiefer