Probe response to Subway Psycho (Man w/Explosives in NY Subway)
By PETE DONOHUE
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Police have launched an investigation into whether a communications breakdown hampered efforts to stop a madman before he set off explosions and a fire in a subway tunnel Sunday night, officials said yesterday.
Transit sources said cops were first alerted about a man running wild in a Greenwich Village subway tunnel nearly 40 minutes before Bonergy Quelal sparked the chaos.
"It's being investigated - what was said, who interpreted or misinterpreted the information and what needs to be corrected - if there was a problem," a high-ranking police source told the Daily News.
The transit sources said that the agency told police at 5:38 p.m. that a man was spotted hurling debris onto tracks north of the Broadway-Lafayette St. station.
The Transit Authority command center requested police go to the next stop up the line - the W. Fourth St. station - so a train could take them toward the man in the tunnel, sources said.
The TA repeated the request that police go to W. Fourth St. four more times, and each time was told that cops were on the way, the sources said.
By 6:17 p.m., Quelal had done his damage - throwing TA equipment at the third rail just south of the W. Fourth St. station, igniting explosions and a fire that caused more than 1,000 straphangers to be evacuated, the sources said.
"Because of a lack of a timely response, this escalated to a situation where it became necessary to evacuate people because of a fire," one transit source said.
The high-ranking police official said the information relayed to cops was to head to the Broadway-Lafayette station, not W. Fourth St.
A Transit Police Bureau unit in a car was assigned the job but reported officers were transporting a prisoner.
A sergeant at Grand Central Station heard the transmissions and took the assignment, arriving at the Broadway-Lafayette station by car at 6:05 p.m., the official said.
The official said that police are assigned to the W. Fourth St. station around the clock, and police there heard an explosion about 6:20 p.m. and called for assistance.
Quelal was then quickly nabbed.
"We did our best with the resources we had, based on the information that was supplied," the police official said.
Originally published on March 3, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/170002p-148274c.html