Teen nabbed in his second subway break-in within a month amid rash of joyrides: MTA

Yahoo

19-02-2025

A teenager alleged to have been involved in last month's R train joyride under Brooklyn was arrested again Tuesday morning, the Daily News has learned — this time for trying to get into the conductor's cab of a train in the Bronx.
The 15-year-old boy was collared while entering the conductor's cab of a No. 2 train at the Prospect Ave. station in Longwood around 4:45 a.m., an MTA spokesperson said.
'Thanks to an alert train crew and nearby NYPD officers, a teenager who had illegally entered a conductor's cab on a 2 train was stopped and arrested before interfering with its operation,' the MTA's chief security officer, Michael Kemper, told The News.
Kemper said the teen had been previously arrested for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 25 joyride.
'What's outrageous is that this perpetrator was recently arrested — and rapidly released — after taking an R train for a reckless unauthorized ride in Brooklyn,' Kemper said. 'We've improved security in transit, and the justice system needs to make sure these repeat criminals get the consequences and parental oversight they clearly require.'
A source with knowledge of the investigation told The News that a second teen was involved in the latest attempt, but bolted from the train and evaded police.
Tuesday's early-morning arrest comes amid at least two more subway break-ins over the long holiday weekend, sources tell The News.
On Friday, transit workers at the Unionport Yard in Van Nest, in the Bronx, found a No. 5 train had been moved from where it had been parked in the train yard and run over an emergency stop signal, sources told The News — the same thing that had happened two days earlier — overnight Wednesday — on a nearby track.
In a separate incident on Sunday in East New York, a C train was found to have been moved more than two car lengths while parked overnight along a stretch of track past the Euclid Ave. station. That train appears to have come to a halt after running over an emergency stop at a closed switch track.
Sources said teenagers were suspected in each instance.
As previously reported by The News, MTA officials are investigating an Instagram post thought to be made during Wednesday's incident, in which at least two young men can be heard talking aboard a train as it eases over an emergency stop in the yard.
Subways in train yards are generally unable to enter the general flow of subway traffic without explicit authorization from the yard's control tower. Emergency stops — part of the subway system's signal network — exist to keep trains off of tracks where they don't belong. When a red signal is present, a stop-arm extends up from the track, designed to trip a lever on the train, activating the emergency air-brake system.
Despite the stop-arms, a squad of teens — allegedly including Tuesday's scofflaw — was able to take a pair of R trains parked on a layup track in Brooklyn on a joyride last month.
The crew, as first reported by The News, managed to take the trains out on a 30-mph run along a section of express tracks in Brooklyn, past at least one green signal — though it remains unclear how far they got. Three teens, including the boy arrested Tuesday, have been busted so far in connection with that joyride.
Last September, two teens were busted after cameras caught them swiping a subway car from a layup track in Queens, then crashing their stolen train into another set of parked subway cars at low speed.