Cricket gal bugging out
Sobs, apologizes, is busted
The Brooklyn “actress” who unleashed hundreds of crickets and worms on panicked straphangers in a subway car last week was arrested Tuesday — and admitted she deserved what she got.
“I deserve it because I was wrong,” said Zaida Pugh, 21, as she was being led by cops from the Transit District 34 station to her arraignment.
“I’m really sorry about everything. I promise [I won’t do it again].”
The purple-haired selfproclaimed performance artist was picked up by the Brooklyn Warrant Squad on Clarendon Road and Ralph Avenue in East Flatbush at 11:30 a.m. and charged with obstructing governmental administration and reckless endangerment, sources said.
Hours earlier, she cried in a video posted on Facebook that “people probably want me dead.”
“I walk outside, and there’s people really after me, like want to kill me . . . There are people that really hate me . . . probably want me dead,’’ a teary-eyed Pugh said. “And I never wanted something like that. People who know me know I am a loving person.”
“I just really had a dream, and I wanted it to go far. I wanted to spread messages out there, and I didn’t want it to happen like this.”
Pugh has claimed that she simply hoped to bring attention to the homeless with her prank — but she has a history of pulling attention- grabbing online stunts, including one in which she pretended to kill her boyfriend’s baby.
Her bizarre insect stunt on a packed D train last Wednesday involved the help of several cohorts and was videotaped. A terrified rider pulled the train’s emergency cord in the mayhem, grinding the subway to a halt and leaving passengers sweltering in the heat without air-conditioning for a halfhour.
Cops said they may charge her pals as well.
“We thought she was an emotionally disturbed person. We took her to the hospital,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. “[Then] she went out and made further statements to the press that she’d done this on purpose.
“She put people at risk. [They] could have had heart attacks. People could have had all kinds of issues, [and been] emotionally scarred from that.’’