QUEENS — Two men were arrested this past weekend for blasting a subway car with graffiti in Richmond Hill after officers patrolling the station caught them hanging around the scene of the crime, police said.
The men were spotted by a team of three plainclothes officers from the Transit Bureau's Citywide Vandals Task Force, who were patrolling the area around the 111th Street J train station, at Jamaica Avenue, just after midnight Saturday, officials said.
The officers saw the men sitting on a platform bench, in front of graffiti that was freshly painted on a J train car that was parked in the station, police said.
The graffiti was not there when the officers had patrolled the station about 10 minutes earlier, according to the criminal complaint.
The policemen also saw a backpack with spray paint cans inside sitting next to the men.
One of the men, later identified as 19-year old Tommy Martinez of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, tried to close the bag when he saw the officers, police said.
His accomplice, identified as Jeremy Cautin, 21, of Jamaica, Queens, was wearing a green latex glove and a gray spray paint can was sticking out of his jacket pocket, police said.
Police said that Cautin acted as a lookout while Martinez spray-painted the word “FEAL” with black spray paint on the car.
The graffiti was 10 feet wide and 3-1/2 feet high, police said.
The men have been charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti, possession of graffiti instruments and criminal trespass, police said.