$7K reward for info on R train bandits as rogue riders' photos are released
John Chiarello, interim president of Transport Workers Union Local 100 — which represents more than 40,000 subway and bus workers — said it would match the NYPD's $3,500 bounty on the young train hijackers, after the NYPD released surveillance photos of the group late Wednesday.
'A bunch of reckless teens took a $20 million piece of equipment out of a secure transit layup area, endangering themselves, transit property and transit workers who may well have been working on the tracks,' Chiarello said in a statement. 'I'm outraged that this theft occurred and [we are] determined to stop copycats.'
The combined $7,000 reward comes as police issued an update with surveillance camera footage showing the teens getting off a Manhattan-bound R train early Sunday morning at the 36th St. and Fourth Ave. stop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Unlike in previously released footage, five of the six suspects have their faces uncovered in the station surveillance tape. One teen has a digital camera hung around his neck.
Still photos released by police show at least one suspect jumping a turnstile.
As previously reported by The News, the crooks are suspected of having broken into at least two sets of R160 subway cars while they were being stored overnight on the express track of Brooklyn's Fourth Ave. line.
Cellphone video taken by one of the subway-stealing suspects and posted on Instagram shows they traveled through at least one local station on the express track and went through at least one signal.
The video shows several of the illicit straphangers at the controls of one R160 subway car traveling at speeds upward of 30 mph. They may have passed at least one in-service train during their joyride, with one of them shouting, 'Train!' before telling another, 'Check [the] radio now,' apparently to see if they'd been spotted.
One of the rogue riders appears to be sitting outside on the front of the lead subway car, his feet dangling over the tracks.
Transit workers preparing to put the trains into service Sunday morning discovered them out of place, with paint covering the onboard security cameras and damage to the door locks on at least one train.
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