Police in Brooklyn cuffed a 14-year-old boy in connection to a spree of vandalism against subway train windows last month.
The teen, whose identity is being withheld due to his age, has been charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief for a weeks-long spree of window smashings affecting numerous subway lines.
Last month, vandals smashed dozens of windows on numerous different subway trains across multiple lines, taking many trains out of service as the MTA scrambled to find replacement glass. The 29-hour spree of mayhem most seriously affected trains on the W line, where service had to be entirely suspended through the morning rush hour.
The MTA estimates the spree caused more than $500,000 in damage.
Police also identified the teen as responsible for a similar incident later in September, where vandals threw a brick at a fast-moving D train in Borough Park, Brooklyn, smashing the front window of the operator’s cabin and forcing the train out of service. That incident was recorded by the vandals themselves and posted to social media.
The teen was arrested on Oct. 4 at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station in Brooklyn, and charged in connection with both incidents. The two other teens seen in the D train video have neither been caught nor publicly identified.
The head of the MTA’s subways division, Demetrius Crichlow, said that video had helped police catch the perp.
“The crime spree that left almost 100 windows smashed in less than a day, and included an object thrown at a moving train, took dozens of trains out of service, delayed thousands of New Yorkers and cost taxpayers at least half a million dollars,” said Crichlow. “These actions were not only selfishly idiotic, they were dangerous, putting our employees at risk. It is fortunate no one was seriously injured.”
A similar string of window vandalism caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to 7 line trains back in 2020, but the perp in those incidents was never caught.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls and messages are kept confidential.
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