Police in New York are looking for a group of thieves who daringly stole a subway train in Brooklyn and took it for a joyride — and posted about their exploits on Instagram.
The NYPD says six males, mostly dressed in black hoodies, made an unauthorized entry onto an R train laid up near the 36th Street stop in Sunset Park on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 25.
The thrill-seekers went on to damage glass panels of security cameras, police say, before taking over the operator controls and getting the train moving.
It’s not clear how far the sextet managed to get, but videos they appeared to post on Instagram, reviewed by PEOPLE, showed the train moving at high rate of speed.
The suspects ultimately brought the train back to its original location before fleeing into the night, an MTA source said. The whole episode went unnoticed at the time, and the next day the train made a scheduled run to Forest Hills, Queens, where the train operator noticed the cab door and security camera had been vandalized.
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The train was then taken out of service for an investigation.
The six unidentified thieves are wanted on reckless endangerment charges.
It’s unclear how they managed to access the cab on the train. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber called the intrusion a “failure” of security that was “not acceptable,” and suggested new train car models should lock up operator cabs using biometric sensors instead of traditional locks.
The MTA hopes to purchase hundreds of new railcars over the next five years to replace the oldest cars in the subway system, which date back to the 1970s and 80s.
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