Train fire-slay bust
‘Rot in hell,’ MTA workers tell suspect in train operator death
An ex-con long suspected of setting a fire that led to the death of a heroic MTA train operator was charged with murder Friday — and transit workers finally got their chance to confront him.
“You’re a f——- murderer!” “Rot in hell!” and “Life in prison!” were among the taunts about a half-dozen MTA workers screamed at Nathaniel Avinger, 50, as he was ledd from the 28th Pre-cinct stationhousee in Harlem.
Avinger, whosee head hung low, saidd nothing. The sus-pect, clad in a blackk winter coat, bluee jeans and a light bluee surgical mask, wass put in a police vehi-cle and driven away..
Avinger faces a murder charge in the March 27 blaze at the 110th St./Central Park North station.
When the fire erupted at 3:15 a.m. in a shopping cart on the second car of a No. 2 train, hero
MTA employee Garrett Goble, 36, ushered passengers to safety in the station.
But Goble, a train operator and father of two boys, at some point got lost in the smoke-filled tunnel and collapsed, possibly from a heart attack, sources said.
“It doesn’t surprise me that this is how he lost his life,” wife Delilah Rodriguez told the Daily News at the time. “He would do anything [to help] ... He was a great guy. He was funny. He was the best father. He loved his kids so much.”
Eric Loegel, the vice president of rapid transit operations for TrTransport Workerrs Union Local 1000, knew Goble foor six years. He annd his fellow MMTA employees shhowed up at the 288th Precinct on Frriday because thhey wanted AAvinger to see thhe conductor’s frriends and “showh him how we feel.”
“It’s been nine months of hoping and praying that we’d finally catch this guy and finally we are here,” Loegel said. “He was just doing his job on that night when this scumbag set the train on fire.”
Of Goble, Loegel said: “I want him to be remembered as a terrific human being, someone who was selfless and generous. He was a great guy, great personality. Just somebody who had amazing energy.”
“This should happened.”
Avinger’s arraignment was pending in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.
“[He] messed with the wrong people,” TWU Vice President of Stations Department Robert Kelley said outside the 28th Precinct.
Kelley couldn’t repeat what he truly wanted to say to Avinger if he had a chance to whisper in the ex-con’s ear.
“You don’t want to know,” he said. “There wouldn’t be too many words I’d be saying. But I would say this: ’Judgment day. Judgment day.’”
Avinger quickly became a person of interest in Goble’s death on March 31, after he was busted for starting a fire two weeks earlier outside a Columbia University dorm.
But at the time, there wasn’t enough to charge him in either blaze, said police.
Avinger has spent some of the time since March in a mental have never institution, and got on cops’ radar after he was busted Wednesday for groping a female train conductor in Brooklyn, said sources.
As he was questioned in the groping, Avinger made statements that linked him to the deadly arson, police said.
He has led a troubled life. A woman who identified herself as Avinger’s relative told the Daily News in March that he jumped from shelter to shelter and had a brother in Houston.
Avinger served prison time for a 2013 robbery conviction, public records show.
Upon Avinger’s arrest, NYC Transit interim president Sarah Feinberg issued a statement saying that “there should be no tolerance for any form of violence in our transit system.
“Fires, sexual assaults, assaults on our workers — these are crimes committed against the very best of New York — the brave men and women who show up and serve this city each day and keep us all moving forward,” Feinberg said.
TWU Local 100 President Tony Utano applauded Avinger’s arrest and thanked the NYPD for not giving up on the case.
“Every transit worker in the city wants justice for Garrett Goble and his family, and this arrest is a huge first step,” Utano said Friday.
“Garrett was hero, and he was stolen from us. This was a horrific, horrific crime, and Garrett deserves justice.”