By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — New York's infamous train "thief" is at it again, but this time he's been caught stealing a bus, police said.
Darius McCollum, who has been arrested more than 20 times for taking, or trying to take, subway trains and other transit vehicles on joyrides, was arrested Tuesday morning for embarking on yet another joyride — this time, in a coach bus taken out of Hoboken, N.J., about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, police said.
At 8:50 a.m. McCollum, 45, of Harlem, was spotted with the Trailways Coach Bus going northbound on the ramp of the Van Wyck Expressway, police said.
He was arrested without incident and charged with grand larceny auto and criminal possession of stolen property, police said.
Though he was reportedly being investigated by the NYPD counter-terrorism task force because he was found with a copy of the Koran and federal emergency response manuals, a spokesperson for the NYPD said police do not believe McCollum has anything to do with terrorism.
McCollum’s penchant for stealing transportation vehicles has put him in the spotlight so many times that it earned him a slot on Time Magazine’s 2009 Top 10 Imposters list.
He has been obsessed with trains since he was a child, and is said to have memorized the subway system by age five. McCollum said he would often impersonate transit employees when he stole trains.
He first gained notoriety back in 1981 when, as a teenager, he drove the E train, complete with passengers, down to the World Trade Center.
He also had a play written about him, “Boy Steals Train,” by theater director and photographer Jude Domski, who says she still keeps in touch with McCollum when he calls once every few months.
“He has a compulsion, it’s really all he knows outside of prison,” Domski told DNAinfo about McCollum.
The compulsion may be linked to Asperger’s Syndrome, a condition he was diagnosed with in prison in 2002, she said. The condition is related to autism and people who have it have trouble with social interactions.
Domski added that while McCollum is a repeat offender, she doesn’t consider him dangerous.
“He’s charming, affable, friendly, warm,” Domski said. “He really loves people.”
