The teen who took a Metrobus joyriding last summer has continued to have run-ins with the transit agency, pretending to be a bus operator twice since then to try to get free rides, according to Metro. William Jackson donned his stepfather’s Metrobus uniform and took a bus from Metro’s Bladensburg bus garage last July. The 19-year-old drove the B2 bus route and picked up riders, driving them until he crashed the bus into a tree.
Since then, he has been caught twice since on Metro property with a fake agency ID or uniform — once even after he was ordered to stay away from Metro facilities, Metro officials said.
| NYC man claims to have stolen 150 buses |
| William Jackson has nothing on one New York man with a transit obsession. |
| Darius McCollum first drove a New York City subway train at the age of 15 in 1981. Since then he’s been arrested at least 27 times impersonating transit workers or commandeering their equipment, including sneaking into a control tower and tripping the emergency brakes on one subway train. He also likes buses — and claims to have stolen 150 of them over the years. |
| “That’s why I love the city so much — so many trains, so many buses,” he told the Daily News last year in a jailhouse interview. “I don’t know what to do with myself.” |
| He was in jail after lifting a Trailways coach in Hoboken, N.J., last August and taking it on joyride across New York City. – Kytja Weir |
“He is persistent,” Metro spokesman Dan Stessel told The Washington Examiner.
After the first incident, Jackson was arrested and charged with stealing the bus. But while that case was pending, he got into trouble again.
On Aug. 26, he was spotted at the Anacostia Metro station wearing a Metrobus uniform, Stessel said. A station manager didn’t recognize him as a Metrobus operator, sensed something suspicious and called transit police.
When cops arrived, they found Jackson wearing a white T-shirt, not a uniform. But, Stessel said, he had the uniform in a backpack — plus his stepfather’s bus operator identification card and a bus radio.
He told police he wasn’t trying to steal a bus that time, Stessel said, but instead was trying to cadge a free ride. He was not charged, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute him.
Just days later, he pleaded guilty of unauthorized use of a vehicle in the bus driving case, court records show. He was later sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation, with the condition that he stay away from Metrobus lots, court records show.
But that didn’t keep him from Metro property — or from trying to impersonate a Metro employee again.
On March 8, transit police were called to Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road on a report that a rider was using a fraudulent employee card to try to board a bus.
It was Jackson, Stessel said. Officers found a color photocopy of his stepfather’s employee ID with a picture of Jackson pasted overtop. Again, he told them, he was just trying to get a free ride.
He was arrested and charged with failure to pay his fare, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office again decided not to prosecute, Stessel said.
Jackson, reached by The Examiner by telephone, said the other allegations were not true but declined to elaborate. “It’s something I want to move past,” he said. “I’m trying to make a better future for myself.”
