Police are searching for a straphanger suspected of unbolting a door switch from a inside a downtown C train Monday evening, snipping the wires and then absconding with the train part, sources tell the Daily News. The train was left stranded in the station for more than 15 minutes.
The suspect was caught on camera ripping a switch panel from the wall of an R211 subway car around 5 p.m. Monday.
Screengrabs of the security footage, obtained by the Daily News, show sparks flying as the suspect can be seen cutting the wires behind the switch panel as the train sits on the downtown platform of the 155th St. station in Washington Heights.
Security footage from onboard a downtown C train shows sparks flying as a young man cuts wires to steal a door switch from the in-service subway. (Obtained by Daily News)
The brazen rush-hour theft — partially dismantling an in-service subway train while riding on it — is at least the second such act in a week. Last Tuesday, the MTA told police an unknown number of “unruly youths” had broken into the rear control cab of a downtown C train at the 86th St. station — also during rush hour — and absconded with a surveillance video monitor from behind the locked door.
The stolen switch, known as a “crew door key switch,” allows the train crew to open single subway doors with a key — rather than open all doors on one side from the conductor’s cabin.
Sources tell the News that Monday’s incident — in which the switch was unbolted from the train and cut out of the wiring harness by a male youth — effectively disabled the door circuits aboard that subway car, leaving the conductor unable to close the doors.
NYC Transit’s Rail Control Center instructed the train crew to discharge all passengers onto the platform — after which the crew had to close all doors manually on the vandalized car.
The train was then taken out of service and sent to Pitkin Yard for repairs.
An MTA spokesman told The News that the train — among the newest in the NYC Transit fleet — has since been repaired and returned to service, but referred all other questions to the NYPD.
A spokesperson for the Police Department told The News that the theft was being investigated as a case of criminal mischief, and that no arrests had yet been made.
It was not immediately clear whether the theft was related to last week’s C train break-in.
Young vandals have been suspected in a slew of subway thefts in recent months.
Unidentified trespassers stole the control stick out of an R train while it was parked underground in southern Brooklyn back in December — along a stretch of storage track popular with joyriders and graffiti artists.
A month before that, an unknown thief absconded with two-way radios from a specialized inspection train while it was parked in the Coney Island Yard.
A 15-year-old boy was arrested early last year after he came to school in the Bronx with a backpack full of stolen MTA equipment.