By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT — A legally blind man said he was arrested after an altercation with a Metro-North conductor following a dispute over ticket fare.
Luke Stocker, 25, said he shouted and cursed at the conductor during a ride from Grand Central Station to Brewster, N.Y., because the ticket puncher refused to sell him a ticket at the normal fare, instead of the more expensive on-board fare.
Stocker, a legally blind massage therapist and classical musician who played at Carnegie Hall as a teen, said he can't see well enough to use ticket vending machines and told the conductor he'd pay the standard fare. The conductor refused.
"I got really, really upset and he asked me to get off the train," Stocker said after he was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court and released. Stocker was arrested and charged with theft of services, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct after refusing to leave the train at the 125th Street Metro-North station.
"I didn't know if it was the last train or not," said Stocker, who was headed home to Carmel, N.Y., after attending Avett Brothers concert on Wednesday at Radio City Music Hall with his girlfriend. "I didn't know. I was freaked out."
According to MTA guidelines, "higher on-board fares do not apply" to customers with "qualifying disabilities" who have the reduced-fare ID card.
Stocker did not have a reduced-fare card, but he said tried to explain to the conductor that he was legally blind and therefore able to pay the normal fare.
"[The conductor] seemed to be almost denying the fact that I was trying to pay the normal fare," Stocker said after his release.
A spokesperson for the MTA said the conductor rightfully denied Stocker special treatment and followed protocol when asking the angry passenger to leave the train.
"He declined to show his documentation and he got [verbally] abusive," MTA spokesperson Marjorie Anders said. "If you parked in a handicapped spot without documentation you would get a ticket."
Stocker is next scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 6.
