Two tunnel security breaches cause scare in city
By LARRY CELONA, PHILIP MESSING and JOHN DOYLE
Two terrifying rail security breaches occurred within hours of each other in the city yesterday -- including one at the World Trade Center, where a man slipped into the PATH tunnel and walked all the way to Jersey before saying he had left a bomb in the tunnel.
That scare -- and an unrelated escapade involving four "urban explorers" infiltrating the under-construction Second Avenue Subway tunnel -- come just days after the feds warned that al Qaeda could be targeting US trains.
"How this could happen is unbelievable," one law-enforcement source told The Post. "Everybody's warning us about tracks and subways and where they're going to attack. And here, the WTC train?"
END OF LINE: A defiant William West (above) and his fellow 'explorers,' Eric Ruggiero, Jacob Bloom and Braiden O'Sullivan, are led to Central Booking yesterday after they were caught in the Second Avenue Subway.
Robert Kalfus
END OF LINE: A defiant William West (above) and his fellow "explorers," Eric Ruggiero, Jacob Bloom and Braiden O'Sullivan, are led to Central Booking yesterday after they were caught in the Second Avenue Subway.
There was no bomb on the tracks, police said.
Officials said Reymundo Rodriguez, 20, of Bayonne, NJ, had hopped down onto the tracks in a Manhattan PATH tunnel. The station was being patrolled by two Port Authority cops.
Rodriguez then walked the two miles to Jersey City.
A PA contractor, Lee Anderson, spotted him exiting at around 3 a.m. and called police.
"I just put a bomb down on the tracks," Rodriguez allegedly told officers.
The tunnel was shut down while the Joint Terrorism Task Force and bomb-sniffing dogs searched for a device.
Anderson told cops, "I asked him what he was doing in the tracks, and he said, 'The train never came . . . so I decided to walk,' "
Rodriguez also allegedly told him he saw President Obama on TV, "and he told me it was safe to walk through the tunnel."
The PA received a $48.3 million federal grant in 2009 to increase PATH security and has spent a total of more than $4 billion on security measures for its transportation facilities since 9/11.
PA PBA President Paul Nunziato, decrying police manpower levels, said, "I hope this wasn't a test run checking for holes in our security."
Rodriguez was charged with criminal trespass, evaluated at a hospital and released.
At around 4:30 a.m., cops arrested four men who had allegedly sneaked into the Second Avenue Subway tunnel carrying Roman candles and cameras.
The men told cops that they were part of an "urban explorers" group and that they planned to use the fireworks for light for photos.
Eric Ruggiero, 25, of Manhattan; Jacob Bloom, 21, of Glen Cove, LI; Braiden O'Sullivan, 21, of Connecticut and William West, 27, of Massachusetts were charged with criminal trespass after Harlem resident Jerry Jackson alerted cops that the four had descended into the tunnel around 112th Street.
"Just because we got bin Laden doesn't mean it's over," said Jackson, a truck driver and Army vet. "We still have to remain alert."
Read more:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/tunnel_punk_terror_scares_clfEzPGLRb3uHPN3pMj5HI#ixzz1LrGJnm49
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