Ex-trolley driver accused of scripting scary Halloween beatdown
A former trolley driver accused of hatching a plot at Hooters to be beaten by a pal masquerading as iconic slasher-film character Michael Myers collected more than $61,600 in benefits while claiming he suffered from nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder, prosecutors said.
By the time he was indicted last month on charges of fraud, perjury and misleading police, Thomas Lucey, 46, of Saugus, had collected $30,562 in workers’ compensation alone. Lucey had even successfully appealed the MBTA’s efforts to stop the checks, assistant Suffolk District Attorney Cailin Campbell said yesterday at the bald and beefy exmotorman’s arraignment in Suffolk Superior Court. In addition, Campbell said, Lucey pocketed more than $31,000 in long-term disability insurance for “acute PTSD.”
Lucey “has never gone back to work,” she said. “The defendant complains that flashbacks from this attack caused him to be depressed, have panic attacks and anxiety, and caused him to have trouble sleeping, with frequent nightmares.”
The T is in the process of officially terminating Lucey’s employment.
“His benefits were discontinued,” T spokesman Joe Pesaturo confirmed. “We will aggressively pursue the payments already made to him.”
Assistant Clerk-Magistrate Lisa Medeiros released Lucey on personal recognizance with the condition he surrender his passport. His attorney, Stephen Borelli, declined to comment.
“This is a case in which the defendant staged an assault. He filed false claims related to that assault, all so he could get paid for not working,” Campbell told Medeiros.
The prosecutor said Lucey and a friend — who has since testified against him to Transit Police and the grand jury investigation — scripted the alleged scheme at Hooters in Saugus on Oct. 26, 2016. Lucey paid his friend $2,000.
“The two men agreed that the attack would take place around midnight on Oct. 29, 2016, at the Cedar Grove Station in Dorchester,” Campbell said. And sure enough, she said MBTA surveillance cameras captured the friend “clad in overalls, gloves, a Michael Myers mask and carrying an orange plastic trick-or-treating pumpkin. As was planned, he waited for the trolley to arrive. And when it did, (he) boarded it, got into a verbal dispute about fare money with the defendant and hit the defendant in the head. (The friend) then dragged the defendant out of the trolley and proceeded to hit him with a gloved hand as the defendant lay on the ground.”
The friend has not been charged.