Darius McCollum is obsessed with transit. The 48 year-old, who has Asperger’s syndrome, has spent 18 years in prison as a result of various transit-related crimes, none of which have resulted in anyone being harmed (or anything, as far as I can tell).
Sean Gardiner, reporting for the Wall Street Journal:
“I just love everything about it,” he said in a July 9 interview at Rikers Island jail. “I love the atmosphere, I love the lights, I love the signals. I love the fact that it’s moving all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s nothing negative I can say about the transit system.”
Mr. McCollum traces his fascination with trains to when he was stabbed at school at the age of 12. Afraid to return to class, he rode the subways all day and befriended a motorman who eventually let him hang out in the crew room at the 179th terminal not far from the McCollum family’s home in Jamaica, Queens.
Had things been handled differently a long time ago, at the time of his first arrest, I bet that McCollum would be a model MTA employee instead of a prisoner.