By Rich Bockmann
An MTA electrician who worked out of a storage yard in Richmond Hill allegedly caused more than half a million dollars’ worth of damage across the Nassau County border early Tuesday when he tore through the town of Elmont, L.I, in a stolen boom truck, leaving a path of downed utility poles, trees and traffic signs in his wake, police said.
The pre-dawn rampage began when Joel Grasman, 51, absconded with a 2013 Mack boom truck loaded with welding equipment around 4 a.m. from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority yard at Jamaica Avenue and 129th Street, Nassau police said.
Grasman then drove the truck about a dozen miles to his home in Elmont, where he unloaded the stolen equipment, police said.
What happened next, authorities said, was Grasman drove the truck from his house with the boom in the upright position, traveling a few blocks before turning south on Meacham Avenue, where he left a warpath of crooked utility poles and dangling power lines stretching about a mile long.
“While [Grasman was] driving, the boom struck multiple telephone poles, traffic signal lights, utility wires and trees causing damage and interruption to various utilities, including LIPA services, Verizon services and Optimum services, causing in excess of $500,000 damage,” police said.
A spokesman for the Long Island Power Authority said Grasman took out about 15 utility poles as the truck’s boom ensnared the overhead wires.
“It’s not so much the truck hitting the pole, but when the bucket was up and it hit wires, as the wires come down the pole comes down with it if the wire doesn’t snap,” spokesman Mark Gross said. “We had about 60 sections of wire come down and dozens of service lines — the lines going from the pole to the customer’s house. In some cases, we saw meters were ripped right off the house.”
Gross said about 6,100 customers had their power knocked out as a result of the damage, and it took around 100 workers to restore most of the power by late Tuesday night, except for a few homes that were so damaged power could not be hooked up.
Nassau police said Grasman abandoned the truck further down the road near Exit 15 on the Southern State Parkway in North Valley Stream, L.I., and he was eventually arrested without incident a few blocks north.
He was charged with criminal possession of stolen property, reckless endangerment, criminal tampering and criminal mischief, police said.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
