A woman arrested last week for allegedly pepper-spraying a transit worker who caught her trying to break into a subway is facing new charges she took a separate train for a joyride days after being released, the Daily News has learned.
Justine Randall, 18, was arrested Monday and charged with reckless endangerment, burglary, trespassing and unauthorized use of a vehicle for allegedly walking onto Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway tracks and proceeding to break into and operate a subway train in Brooklyn at a speed of at least 30 mph, according to a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn Criminal Court.
Police were called around 4:30 a.m. Sunday after a subway tower operator noticed a train making an unauthorized move on the express track near the Liberty Ave. station of the C train in East New York, according to sources.
Sources said the rogue subway driver took the train two stations away before returning it to the layup tracks near Liberty Ave. By the time police arrived, the apparent joyrider was gone.
But according to a criminal complaint filed in Brooklyn Criminal Court, surveillance footage from the train and the station showed a woman at the controls of a subway train, piloting it “at a high rate of speed exceeding 30 miles per hour.”
Randall’s alleged joyride comes just four days after she was arrested on charges she pepper-sprayed an MTA transit worker in the face after being caught trespassing on a subway storage track near the 86th St. Station in Bay Ridge.
In that incident, an MTA supervisor checking a laid-up train for trespassers encountered the person cops later alleged was Randall.
Sources told The News that the trespasser, clad in black, tried to board the parked train early on the morning of Monday, May 26, while the supervisor was aboard. A showdown ensued, with the trespasser pepper-spraying the transit worker, who had armed himself with a wooden “paddle-shoe” — a tool meant for safely disengaging a train from the third rail.
After an exchange of blows and pepper-spray, the trespasser ran off through an emergency exit — but not before sources said the perp stole the supervisor’s keys.
Randall pleaded not guilty to those charges last week, and her case was adjourned to a diversionary program known as “Problem-Solving Court.”
Attorneys with the Legal Aid Society, who are representing Randall in both cases, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The incidents are the latest in a spate of transit thefts.
Last month, $12,000 worth of security cameras were stolen from a train in Queens after a botched attempt at a joyride.
In January, a group of teens broke into a pair of R trains parked along layup tracks in Brooklyn and took them for a spin.
A 15-year-old Bronx boy suspected of involvement in that and at least eight other train break-ins was nabbed a month later when he showed up at school with a backpack full of MTA walkie-talkies, train keys and a slew of other transit tools and gear.
