Firebomb Sears N.Y. Subway Car, Injures 43

An incendiary device exploded in a crowded subway car Wednesday, panicking passengers who fled billowing smoke and flames. At least 43 riders were injured, four of them burned critically.

“It was just a big orange flash . . . ,” said Karen Singer, one of the passengers. “Some people got down on the floor because they thought it was a gunshot, but from where I was standing, you could see the orange come up. I could see the flames.”

Police said a jar containing a flammable liquid with an external igniter apparently went off in a knapsack being held by a passenger in the fifth car of the eight-car train.

Some riders beat out flames that licked at the clothing of fellow passengers in the car. An off-duty transit police officer grabbed a fire extinguisher from a token booth to fight the flames.

About 50 people were in the car when the firebomb ignited. Leaving briefcases and purses behind, some fought their way through the smoke and confusion to the platform of the Fulton Street Station and then to the street.

“There was screaming, there was hollering, there was smoke and it was just horrible,” said Latoya Bernard, another rider.

“It was mayhem. There were people on the ground burning and rolling around,” said Bennett Fischthal, who rode the car next to the one where the device ignited. “One woman came running out and her jacket was on fire. Her coat was on fire. Her hair was on fire. We just knocked her to the ground with people swatting at her with their packages.”

Denfield Otto, the transit police officer who was on his way to choir practice in Harlem, told investigators that he heard a series of popping sounds and then a larger explosion that sent flames billowing through part of the subway car.

“Some brave passengers took off their coats and tried to beat back the flames,” Otto said.

At a City Hall press conference Wednesday night, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said officers had apprehended a man with serious burns on his legs as he climbed from the tracks onto a subway platform in Brooklyn shortly after the explosion.

The man’s pants had been burned off below the knees, Bratton said, and he was being treated for burns Wednesday night at a New York hospital.

Bratton identified the man as Edward Leary, a 49-year-old unemployed computer operator from Scotch Plains, N.J., with a possible second address in Brooklyn.

Leary was described as being more than six feet tall with long brown hair--a description fitting the one that some witnesses gave of the man holding the knapsack on the train.

Leary told authorities he had fled through the subway tunnel under the East River to Brooklyn after the explosion. Police sources said a search of Leary’s home had turned up materials that could be used to make an incendiary device, but authorities offered no motive or other explanation for his alleged involvement.

Bratton said the “improvised incendiary device” that went off on the train had a crude ignition device--possibly battery-powered--separate from the jar of incendiary liquid.

The device appeared to be very similar to a firebomb that went off earlier this week in a subway station in Harlem, officials said. That bomb left a teen-age boy with burns over 40% of his body.

Firefighters and police officers who first arrived at the scene of the explosion found badly burned riders lying on the platform, and they immediately gave first aid to victims. Other officers, fearing a second bomb, hustled the remaining passengers from the station.

“At first, people from our car came out to see just what people were yelling about,” said Chaya Abelsky, a passenger in another car of the train. “When they realized and they saw, they told everyone else to get off and run for their lives. . . .”

The Brooklyn-bound No. 4 train had just pulled into the station Wednesday and its doors were open when conductor Stephen Russ said he heard a popping sound. Russ later told union representatives that at first he thought the sound was gunfire. Then, he said, he saw smoke.

Russ said he saw two people on fire running out of the train and that the station filled with smoke.

Subway service was disrupted for a time. Thousands of riders were stranded as all service at the Fulton Street Station, a major junction of several lines, was shut down.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani visited the scene, a short distance from City Hall. When he arrived, lower Broadway was clogged with fire equipment, ambulances and other rescue vehicles. Some victims wearing oxygen masks were being treated as they lay on stretchers on the sidewalk.

At a news conference later, the mayor said the prompt response of emergency-services personnel had helped prevent further panic.

“Sometimes, an evacuation in a situation like this could do more damage than the actual incident,” Giuliani said. “Precisely the opposite happened here.”

The Fulton Street Station is just a short walk from the World Trade Center where six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in February, 1993, when a powerful bomb exploded in the worst incident of domestic terrorism in the nation’s history.

Goldman is a Times staff writer and Olen is a special correspondent. Times researcher Audrey Britton contributed to this story.

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Subway Bombing

A firebomb exploded in a New York City subway train early Wednesday afternoon.

HOW IT HAPPENED

1) 1:36 p.m. EST: The No. 4 train pulls into the Fulton Street Station in the Wall Street area.

2) Witnesses hear a series of popping sounds, followed by the explosion.

3) A fireball quickly engulfs nearby passengers, who begin screaming and pounding each other to beat out the flames.

THE BOMB: The device appeared to be a glass jar, filled with flammable liquid and with an external igniter, authorities said.

POSSIBLE LINK: Police say the apprehended a 49-year-old unemployed computer operator after the man fled the scene through the East River subway tunnel. The man suffered severe burns, police said, and his pants were burned off below the knees.

PAST TERROR

February, 1993: Six people were killed and more than 1,000 others injured when a terrorist bomb exploded in the basement garage of the World Trade Center.

Sources: Times staff and wire reports