Postcard from the Slope

3-Year-Old Rides The Subway Alone

I read about this in the New York Times this morning. Good New York story.

Apparently a 3-year-old Queens boy left his mom at a Roosevelt Avenue McDonalds, got on a subway train and rode alone for seven stations until he was tracked down by police.

The boy apparently walked to the Main Street stop of the No. 7 line at Roosevelt Avenue. There seemed to be three ways the boy could have gotten down into the subway system: by crossing a busy stretch of Roosevelt Avenue and entering there; by walking a full city block to entrances at Main Street; or by taking a long escalator located about 200 feet from the restaurant down into the station.
He somehow got by the turnstiles and boarded a westbound train, the police said.

According to the Times: a detective from the Vice Major Case Team was having lunch at that very same McDonalds when he saw a hysterical woman crying "My son. My son. What happened to my son?"  He issued an alert after checking the store's surveillance video. At around the same time, a subway passenger noticed the boy riding solo and told a transit worker who notified the police.

I love the quote from the boy's dad, Jose Lino Marquez, 40: “Everything now is O.K.. My son likes trains,: he told the New York Times.