Teenagers arrested after Queens subway joyride, NYPD says
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NEW YORK CITY, New York (WCBS) — Two teenagers have been charged with stealing a New York City subway train and taking it for a joyride, police say.
Investigators spent more than a week trying to track down suspects after the R train was reported stolen from a station in Queens on Jan. 25.
The suspects charged are 15 and 17 years old, the NYPD said. The younger boy was arrested at his school in Brooklyn, while the older boy was taken into custody at his home.
Police said Monday they were looking for four additional suspects.
MTA employees told police that people boarded the unoccupied train at 71st Avenue, where out-of-service trains are stored, then drove it a short distance and broke numerous windows in one of the cars.
Authorities found a video on social media allegedly showing the subway joyride in action. The footage shows one person operating the controls in the conductor’s cabin, a second dangling his legs over the tracks, and a third standing behind him.
Surveillance video later released by police shows at least six people inside the train car.
It was not the first time a New York City subway train has been stolen. In September, two 17-year-olds were charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief after crashing an unoccupied train in Queens. Last January, another vacant R train was taken from the Forest Hills/71st Avenue station and driven onto storage tracks.
The MTA said the subway taken for the latest joyride was locked, indicating transit keys were used to get in. In response, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber suggested upgrading cabins with facial recognition.
“Failure of security, failure of supervision, the monitoring process that needs to be able to stop a train that’s operating that’s not supposed to be operating,” Lieber said. “It’s also time to talk about, when we’re buying these new cars, we gotta have modern ways of controlling anyone operating it. Biometrics. We use biometrics to check people’s attendance.”
The joyriders didn’t go far this time. The train was found near the tracks where it was stolen.
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