Model Forum / General / Railroads / June 2004

Here is soemone a little over the edge...

Drawn to Trains, a Well-Traveled Fanatic Is Back in Trouble
By MICHAEL LUO

By now, Darius McCollum's exploits have become the stuff of city lore.

He is the eccentric transit fanatic from Queens who has spent more than
a third of his life behind bars for transgressions related to his posing
as a New York City Transit worker. Among the notable offenses on his rap
sheet are commandeering an E train on a trip to the World Trade Center
from Herald Square when he was just 15 and taking a number of city buses
for joy rides.

He has long vexed transit officials, who posted his picture at stations
and depots. But to a small band of dedicated supporters and friends, Mr.
McCollum is the ultimate example of the system's failing someone who
badly needs help.

On Friday, Mr. McCollum, now 39, was arrested again, just two months
after being released from jail after being held on a parole violation
related to his latest transit-related conviction, his 19th.

His mother, Elizabeth McCollum, who has struggled to make sense of his
obsession for years, said yesterday that she blamed him for his latest
troubles. "Darius brought this on himself," she said. "He flubbed it
himself."

He had just spent three and a half years behind bars for sneaking into a
subway control tower at 57th Street, tripping the emergency brakes on an
N train and descending to the tracks in a transit authority uniform to
sort out the mess.

This time, according to the criminal complaint that has been filed
against him by the Queens district attorney's office and transit
officials, Mr. McCollum walked into the Long Island Rail Road's train
yard in Jamaica, Queens, wearing an orange reflector vest and a hard
hat, around noon on Friday.

When a railroad worker asked him who he was, he produced a business card
that identified him as a captain and an independent railroad safety
consultant. He then asked to talk to workers from Bombardier, the
company that manufactures trains for the subway, the L.I.R.R. and
Metro-North, the complaint said. The employee sent him over to a group
from Bombardier that was in the yard.

Mr. McCollum identified himself to the group, again explaining that he
was a safety consultant, the complaint said, and began asking a series
of questions about the safety mechanisms of the new M-7 locomotives,
which the railroad has rolled out in the last few years.

When the worker who first spotted him began getting suspicious and asked
him for more identification, Mr. McCollum walked quickly out of the
yard, the complaint said. Workers called the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority police, who arrested him nearby.

After searching him, the police found several railroad-related keys,
including one that would have started an M-7 locomotive nearby and
others that would have allowed him to operate other equipment in the
yard, the complaint said.

Mr. McCollum is now being held in $250,000 bail, charged with attempted
grand larceny, criminal impersonation, possession of stolen property,
trespassing and possession of burglar's tools.

Mr. McCollum's supporters, who rallied behind him after his last arrest,
say that he suffers from a social disorder similar to autism, known as
Asperger's syndrome.

The disorder is also called "the little professor syndrome." Its
sufferers often become obsessed with specific topics, talking endlessly
about them with stunning expertise; they have problems socializing, make
inappropriate comments and avoid eye contact. Obsession with trains and
train trivia is common among sufferers of Asperger's.

Typically, the syndrome is diagnosed in childhood. Less is known about
adult sufferers. The judge in Mr. McCollum's last criminal case rejected
Asperger's as a defense, and sentenced him to two and a half to five
years in prison.

Mr. McCollum's lawyer in that case, Stephen C. Jackson, said yesterday
that he later asked a psychiatrist at the State University of New York
at Stony Brook, Dr. John Pomeroy, to examine his client in prison. Dr.
Pomeroy, he said, gave Mr. McCollum a diagnosis of Asperger's.

Reached by telephone yesterday, Dr. Pomeroy did not dispute Mr.
Jackson's claim but declined to confirm the diagnosis, citing patient
confidentiality. He did confirm examining Mr. McCollum in prison.

Mr. McCollum was paroled earlier this year. Originally, he was supposed
to go to North Carolina, where his parents, Samuel and Elizabeth, live,
friends said yesterday. But in the end, they got into an argument
because he wanted to bring his wife, Nelly Rodriguez, an Ecuadorean
immigrant he had met on a subway platform just before he went to prison
and married while behind bars, the friends said.

The two went up to Albany to look for an apartment, and he called his
parole officer to tell him, his friends said. But one of the conditions
of his parole was that he not leave the New York City area, so he was
sent back to jail for 90 days. In April, he was released again.

Since then, his supporters have been scrambling to line up help for him.
Lori Shery, who runs an Asperger's advocacy group in Edison, N.J.,
arranged for him to attend a support group that met three times a month
on the Upper West Side and was trying to find a therapist for him.

Mr. McCollum attended the group a few times but stopped coming over in
the last few months, said Michael Carley, who ran the group. Mr. Carley
said he tried to steer Mr. McCollum away from talking about trains to
why he liked them so much, a change that helps many sufferers begin to
resist their impulses. Mr. McCollum was showing signs of progress before
he stopped coming, he said.

Daisy Quinteros, 29, Mr. McCollum's stepdaughter, lived with her mother,
Ms. Rodriguez, and Mr. McCollum, who she called Dario, on the Lower East
Side.

She described him yesterday as raro, meaning "strange." He and her
mother argued constantly, usually about his obsession, she said.

"Sometimes he would come home with all these things connected to
trains," she said. "Keys, tools, a uniform."

Mr. McCollum's friends said they thought that he might be able to
channel his obsession into a job where he could use his extensive
knowledge, and he told them that he was looking for work as a
transportation consultant, although he never got his high school diploma.

Jude Domski, a theater director who produced a play based on his life
and later became his friend, said yesterday that about a week before his
arrest, he stopped by her apartment in a hard hat. He also told her that
he had a reflector vest and that he needed the gear for safety classes
he was taking for an internship with a transportation organization. She
did not know, she said, whether to believe him.

The morning before his arrest, Ms. Shery said, Mr. McCollum told her he
got into a fight with his mother. He left in a huff, so he went to the
train yard.

" 'It usually makes me feel better,' " she said he told her.

Anthony DePalma contributed reporting for this article.