A man deliberately derailed a train at the Port of Los Angeles on Tuesday to draw attention to a conspiracy theory about the true purpose of a US Navy hospital ship stationed there.

The incident happened when Eduardo Moreno, a train engineer, drove a speeding Pacific Harbour Line train through multiple barriers before missing the USNS Mercy by more than 250 meters.

According to the US Department of Justice, prosecutors charged the 44-year-old from San Pedro with the deliberate wrecking of a train.

Mr Moreno was immediately taken into custody by a California Highway Patrol officer who witnessed the crash.

He reportedly told the officer: “You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to. People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”

The locomotive came to a standstill and was found to be leaking fuel, before firefighters took control at the scene.

Mr Moreno had taken the cargo train through a steel blockade and chain-link fence before smashing through a second chain-link fence, according to the court report.

Prosecutors said that the engineer admitted he carried out the derailment because he believed the USNS Mercy ship – sent to provide extra hospital capacity to the city of Los Angeles during the coronavirus pandemic – was part of suspicious government activity.

Mr Moreno added that he had not pre-planned the incident, but wanted to ‘wake people up’ to the hospital ship’s so-called alternative purpose.

He added: “Sometimes you just get a little snap and man, it was fricking exciting . . . I just had it and I was committed. I just went for it, I had one chance,”

A spokesman for the Port of Los Angeles, Phillip Sanfield, added that the locomotive did not come close to touching the Mercy.

He said: “It would have had to have gone several hundred yards through a parking lot and cross a water channel to reach the ship,

“The tracks are nowhere near the Mercy.”

An investigation is being led by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Port of Los Angeles Police.