deranged woman on subway
© errayj/facebookA woman sent straphangers into a frenzy when she released crickets on a train over the Manhattan Bridge.
A wacky subway rider released a cloud of crickets and urinated on herself in a rush hour train crossing the Manhattan Bridge, sending horrified straphangers into a frenzy.

The bizarre incident took place on a Brooklyn-bound D train about 6:05 p.m. Wednesday, police said.

"Woman just let crickets out on the D Train as we went over the Manhattan Bridge," passenger Ezra Mechaber wrote on Twitter. "Panic ensued. Someone pulled the E-Brake. Stuck. New York."

Rory Frizell, 34, who rode in the train car while commuting home to Bensonhurst, told the Daily News he initially feared the worst when the commotion broke out and he heard a woman yell out, "she has a jar" and "close that!"

"We thought there was like a chemical attack," he said.

Frizell said there was pure pandemonium, with the crickets and worms causing a "bum rush" to the other side of the train.

The woman told the passengers she needed to vomit and started to dry heave. Then she said, "I have to s---" and tried to lift her dress.

A man on the train was able to calm her and kept her from making the frenzied situation worse, Frizell said.

"It was, in a word, chaotic. It was just utter chaos," he said.


The deranged woman opened and waved the container of bugs, causing her fellow riders to freak, police said.

"Her actions were making numerous other passengers uncomfortable," an understated police source said.

With the emergency brake pulled, the train was stalled over the East River for 15 agonizing minutes.

Police and an MTA source said several straphangers moved in to try to restrain the woman.
New York subway D train
© JJLouis / iStockA passenger pulled the emergency brake on the D train as riders ran to escape the crickets.
"She was hysterical for 20 minutes and peed herself before the train operator unlocked the car doors to let us through," Mechaber tweeted. "Mass hysteria in a locked, enclosed space is something else."

"Moving again now, cops meeting us at DeKalb," Mechaber added. "Never seen a crowd get so panicked so fast, everyone rushed to the other side of the train."

The train pulled into the DeKalb Ave. station about 6:30 p.m., where police took the woman into custody.

She was taken to New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn for psychiatric observation, police said.

Nobody was injured in the mayhem.