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Canadian authorities have found evidence that a criminal act may have led to a train crash in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, that killed at least 15 people, provincial police Capt. Michel Forget said Tuesday, according to CNN. 

There have been many questions about the crash and explosion that wiped out a swath of the town 130 miles east of Montreal. As of Tuesday evening, 35 people were still missing, Forget said.

Authorities offered no further details about the case but said it was not caused by terrorism.

"I will not speculate on the elements that we have recovered," Forget told reporters.

Investigators had earlier said that they are trying to figure out whether the train's brakes were disabled before it barreled at a dangerous speed into the Quebec town, derailed and burst into a deadly inferno.

Firefighters in the nearby town of Nantes put out a separate blaze on the train shortly before it crashed into Lac-Megantic early Saturday. Ed Burkhardt, chief executive officer and president of Rail World, the parent company of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, has told media outlets there's evidence the engine powering the brakes was shut down at some point.

Pressed to elaborate by CTV, Burkhardt wrote Tuesday in an e-mail exchange, "We are now aware the firefighters shut down the locomotive. By the time (Montreal, Maine & Atlantic) people found out, it was too late."