Cops arrested a 15-year-old Bronx boy Thursday who’s been linked to as many as eight subway and rail yard break-ins — including taking a stolen subway R train on a dangerous joyride.
The youth — who is not being named because he is a minor – sparked suspicion Thursday morning after setting off a metal detector at Alfred E. Smith Technical High School in the Bronx, sources told the News. School safety agents searched his bag and found an orange MTA vest, an MTA ID card, multiple transit walkie-talkies, train keys and other tools, according to the sources.
The 15-year-old bolted from the scene, but sources said cops arrested him later Thursday at a Bronx residence.
The teen was charged with six trespassing offenses Thursday; he was already facing charges in connection with last month’s R train joyride as well as last week’s attempt to break into a Bronx No. 2 train. Police sources said the charges against him nclude a subway break-in the day after his No. 2 train arrest, and a break-in at Staten Island’s Clifton Yard.
Spokespeople for the MTA and the Department of Education declined to comment.
A total of six teenagers are suspected of participating in January’s brazen R train joyride, in which two trains were stolen while parked on the express tracks of Brooklyn’s Fourth Ave. line overnight.
As first reported by the Daily News, the group of young thrill seekers, all clad in black and wearing masks, posted video to Instagram showing them at the controls of two R160 subway cars traveling 30 mph before returning the pilfered trains to near where they swiped them, police said.
The teens — one of whom sat at the nose of the train with his feet hanging off the front — seemed to have technical familiarity with the trains, at one point checking the subway’s two-way radio to see if they’d been spotted.
Three of the teens, including the 15-year-old picked up Thursday, have since been arrested in the R train case.
It was not immediately clear of any of the six incidents included other recent instances of train trespassing.
Last week, two teens posted a video to Instagram showing them slowly driving a train over an emergency trip-stop inside Unionport Yard in the Bronx. Sources told the News this week that transit workers caught a group of teens was breaking into the Moshulu Yard also in the Bronx last weekend — but they fled before cops arrived.
Transit officials said this week that they have increased their enforcement of proper identification inside rail yards and other restricted areas in response to the spree, and that work is underway to beef up the locks on subway control cabs.
New York City Transit crews have also set up alarms at various train yards to alert crews to unauthorized movements, NYC Transit President Demetrius Crichlow told The News Wednesday.
“We’re taking this very seriously,” he said.
With Thomas Tracy and Cayla Bamberger