Two teenagers turned themselves in at the 107th Precinct in Fresh Meadows, where they were booked for stealing an unoccupied MTA subway car at the Briarwood-Van Wyck Blvd. station and taking it for a brief joy ride just after midnight on Thursday, Sept. 12.
The 17-year-old girl surrendered just after noon on Wednesday, and her accomplice, a 17-year-old boy, turned himself in the following morning. They were each charged with two counts of criminal mischief in the first degree and reckless endangerment in the first degree.
The two teens are accused of breaking into the vacant, out-of-service subway car and operating it for about 50 feet before they struck another unoccupied subway. No injuries were reported, but the train sustained around $1,500 worth of damage to the subway cars due to the collision, according to the criminal complaint. The two teens fled the scene before officers from the 107th Precinct and Transit District 20 arrived after responding to a 911 call about the incident.
They turned themselves in after their images were widely disseminated in local media. The young man boasted about his photo, telling a detective, “That’s me in the flyer,” according to the complaint.
At an unrelated press conference at the Corona Yards on Wednesday, MTA Interim President Demetrius Crichlow addressed how the subway snatchers were caught on camera.
“There’s no question it was an extremely foolish and reckless act of two individuals accessing [the] live track in order to get access to our train,” Crichlow said. “We’ve continually said that we have cameras. We’re aggressively installing cameras. We’re at approximately 70% of the fleet right now have cameras in and these cars specifically do so. We have great video which has been turned over to the police, and we’re confident that they will get the people, the perpetrators in this case.”
The teenagers were arraigned separately in Queens Criminal Court on Thursday as adolescent offenders. They were ordered to return to court on Sept. 25
