A fellow MTA employee who knows the 21st Street G train station very well is coming forward to defend the agent who witnessed a rape there and tells the Daily News that agents are "trained not to leave their booths for fear of a ruse, and do not have an outside line to dial 911 underground." David Chance is a 24-year MTA veteran who also worked as a station agent at the same spot where John Koort was working and called station command during the rape of Maria Besedin. Besedin went public to the media after a judge earlier in the week threw out her lawsuit against the MTA, Koort and train conductor Harmodio Cruz for their lack of effort in preventing the rape they witnessed. But Chance says Koort did everything he could, telling the News, "He would have been foolish to go out there. He immediately alerted the emergency system—that's all we are empowered to do. If it was me, unfortunately, I would have done the exact same thing." more ›

A Queens judge has thrown out a suit against the MTA and two of its employees filed by a woman who was raped on the platform of the G train's 21st Street stop and accused onlooking transit workers of not doing enough to help her. Subway conductor Harmodio Cruz and station agent John Koort both called the command center to alert authorities of the assault in progress, but Cruz allowed his train to leave the station and Koort did not call cops directly. The judge said that the effectiveness of those extra efforts was "pure speculation." He added, "This is not the type of egregious situation that offends common sense and decency ... where they watched and did nothing." By the time cops arrived, the rapist had escaped and has not since been caught. The lawyer for the victim, an artist and an NYU student at the time of the attack, said that she was crying and devastated at the news. He told reporters, "How inept do their [transit workers] actions need to be before the courts will let a New Yorker file a case like this?" more ›