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PATH Train With Potential Bomb Allowed To Proceed Tunnel To WTC


In a glaring security breach, a Port Authority police supervisor allowed a PATH train with a potential bomb aboard to travel from Jersey City to the World Trade Center, sources told The Post.

Incredibly, the same cop was reprimanded for doing the same thing a year ago, when he authorized a PATH train to continue without checking out another suspicious package, the outraged sources said.

In the latest incident, Lt. James O’Neill gave the train the green light Wednesday, despite pleas from subordinates that he wait for a K-9 officer who was on the way to check the suspicious package left under a seat.

“It was a clear dereliction of duty,” a police official said, charging that O’Neill needlessly imperiled the crew and could have endangered two prime terror targets—the Hudson PATH tunnel and the WTC site itself.

The suspicious box was spotted at about 7:50 p.m. on a Red Line train at the Exchange Place station as the evening rush was dying down, sources said.

Patrol cops were notified and evacuated passengers, but crew members, including the engineer, brakeman, flagmen and conductors, remained on board.

PAPD K-9 Unit Officer Bryan Fitzpatrick and his bomb-sniffing German shepherd, Max, had been dispatched and were about five minutes away.

 But O’Neill, working at Journal Square in Jersey City, about three miles west of Exchange Place, apparently wanted to keep things moving and “cleared the train” for departure. It soon left for the WTC station, which is about 15 minutes away, sources said.

O’Neill made the call “from his desk”—without showing up at the Exchange Place station to investigate, a source said.

When the train arrived at the WTC platform, K-9 cop Salvatore LoBrutto and his German shepherd, Rexo, determined the package was a remote-control toy helicopter inside a box.

(Source: NY Post)



3 Responses

  1. OY- Great! A REMOTE CONTROL toy helicoptor. Remote controls can easily be wired to a bomb. Did some one plant that to see how sloppy our security people can be? To test how well the remote controls will respond/function while traveling through the tunnel, at a distance from the sender?
    Very scary. I thought NYC was supposed to be really good at security.

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