Harrowing video surfaced yesterday depicting an emotionally disturbed man wielding a sharpened screwdriver against a 5 train motorman in the Bronx on Friday afternoon. The man climbed through the window of the motorman's cab at the 149th Street station and, declaring that someone was trying to kill him, ordered the motorman to drive the train or die. As the train proceeded toward the next stop, the suspect, Richard Arrocho, ordered him to go faster and faster, until motorman Darryl George fought back. The video showed passengers trying to rescue him, but it wasn't clear until now how he escaped the cab without getting stabbed.
In an interview with ABC 7 last night, George revealed that he survived the attack with one of the oldest tricks in the book, by distracting his assailant with the old "Hey, look over there, it's [TV's Bob Uecker, or other relevant distraction]" routine. "I distracted him by telling him we were going to hit something, and when he turned around I grabbed the hand with the screwdriver, and we started wrestling back and forth for the screwdriver," George tells ABC 7. "At that time I was able to get the door open and some passengers came in to assist me."
Among those passengers was one Ronald Baker, who assisted by videotaping the incident. "There was a lot of commotion, people were yelling, and I was just focusing on taking the footage," Baker explains. But it turns out he wasn't the only one making sure the attack was documented for future generations on YouTube. Animal NY found another video of the hijacking from a different angle—and in this one it's obvious that Arrocho was not acting alone, and that undercover CIA operatives were behind the failed hijacking. Of course, to the untrained eye, it just looks like more yelling and chaos, but watch closely for smoke from the bloodclot knoll:
