MTA to honor hero
Salute to motorman who died saving riders
MTA officials on Monday announced plans to dedicate a Brooklyn subway station to honor Garrett Goble, a motorman who lost his life in March while saving straphangers from a train fire sparked by a crazed arsonist.
The honor — which will include a commemorative plaque and art installation at the Flatbush Ave.- Brooklyn College train terminal— is the latest bit of closure for Goble’s widow, Delilah, who for the last nine months has fought for justice for her husband.
Prosecutors delivered some of that justice on Friday when Nathaniel Avinger, 50, was charged with sparking the deadly blaze on an uptown No. 2 train in Harlem in the early hours of March 27 that killed Goble.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Delilah Goble said at a news conference announcing the station dedication. “It came just in time. My son’s birthday is tomorrow. He wants justice for his dad just like we do.”
The MTA will work with
Goble’s family and officials from Transport Workers Union Local 100 to design the plaque and art installation at the station, which is at the end of the Nos. 2 and 5 lines and was used by the late transit worker daily when he was a child.
The dedications will be installed during the spring, by which time “you won’t be able to leave this station without thinking of Garrett,” said interim NYC
Transit President Sarah Feinberg.
Avinger in the meantime faces a murder charge for the blaze, which broke out at the 110th St.-Central Park North station on the No. 2 line after the alleged arsonist lit on fire a shopping cart full of flammable materials on the train Goble operated.
Sources said Avinger had spent much of his time since March in a mental institution and had been suspected by police for sparking the fire since then. He resurfaced on cops’ radar after he was busted last Wednesday for groping a female subway conductor, said sources.
MTA officials said Goble heroically helped passengers off his train as smoke filled the uptown tunnel. An incident report shows Goble was reported to be on the sidewalk after all the passengers were evacuated, but that appeared to be a mistake as 30 minutes later he was reported unconscious on the underground tracks.
“An attack on any of our frontline workers is an attack on all New Yorkers,” said NYPD Transit Chief Kathleen O’Reilly, who described Avinger as “a defendant that clearly has no regard for human life.”
Local 100 President Tony Utano said the union would establish a scholarship fund in Goble’s name, adding that he hopes the plaque and art installation at the Brooklyn station will tell the late worker’s story for generations to come.
“Garrett was a hero, and he will always be remembered as a hero,” said Utano. “He will never be forgotten.”