Legendary Transit Troublemaker Pleads Guilty to Stealing Hoboken Bus

A New York man with a long history of causing headaches for the Metropolitan Transit Authority will serve 2 1/2 to five years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to stealing a bus from a Hoboken maintenance facility in 2010, the New York Daily News reported.

Back in 2010, Darius McCollum, now 48, was arrested in Queens while driving an empty New York Trailways bus that had gone missing from a Hoboken maintenance depot earlier that morning and was tracked to New York using GPS, according to a 2010 Associated Press report.

McCollum, who has been arrested 27 times for transit-related crimes, including commandeering an E train from 34th Street to the World Trade Center as a 15-year-old, admitted in Queens Supreme Court Monday to stealing the New York Trailways bus in 2010, according to the New York Daily News.

McCollum gained something of a cult following in the mid-1990s when transit authorities, fed up with his transit-related transgressions that included impersonating MTA workers, collecting subway fares and clearing debris from train tracks, asked riders to report McCollum sightings and even posted thousands of wanted posters around the city in trains and at stations.

McCollum's compulsion for committing mass transit misdeeds and his lifelong obsession with transit systems is caused by Asperger syndrome, a form of autism characterized by repetitive patterns of behavior and interests, his lawyers argue.

His mother told the New York Times in 2008 that she and her husband had tried many times to persuade their only son to move to North Carolina with them and out of New York City, where his bus and train obsession was likely to get him into trouble, but he's had a hard time staying away.

“He just loves New York,” she told the Times. “He knows the people in Transportation. And he goes up there to be around them.”