16-year-old Keron Thomas goes on a NY subway joyride

Good job there wasn’t a replacement rail serviceLots of young boys are obsessed with trains. But one 16 year-old kid took his interest slightly too far. On this day in 1993, Keron Thomas pretended to be a New York City subway driver, signed on for a shift and drove an A train around Manhattan for three hours before being discovered.

He managed to operate the vehicle without incident until he accidentally went a bit too fast around a bend and triggered the train’s emergency brake. When he couldn’t reset it, the authorities arrived and took him into custody.Rather than being furious about a youngster hijacking a subway train full of passengers and driving it about, New Yorkers took Keron to their hearts, considering him some sort of folk hero.

In his defence, he claimed to have always been a big fan of locomotives and obsessively read the subway operators instruction manual in preparation for a career on the underground. He just decided to start work a bit too early. Judges took pity on Keron and he managed to avoid jail time. It seemed the incident got train driving completely out of his system. He later became an electrician.