One person was killed and more than 100 injured when a train filled with rush hour commuters crashed the platform through a wall at the Hoboken terminal, one New York’s busiest, Thursday morning. Witnesses described scenes of chaos as the train entered the station at a high rate of speed, vaulted over a barrier, coursed through the depot and came to a halt by the station’s waiting area. “The train ‘wobbled,’ ” Amy Krulewitz told The New York Times, “then boom!” The train, which was running late from Spring Valley, N.Y., on the Pasack Valley Line, caused extensive structural damage to the building, knocking over beam and columns and collapsing the roof. Stunned witnesses said they crawled through the wreckage to extricate passengers unable to escape through the train’s windows. While PATH trains remain open, N.J. Transit, Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and ferry service are suspended pending an investigation. (New York Post and New York Times)
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the state will investigate the broomstick-beating death of a 6-year-old Harlem boy after he remained with his mother despite past investigations into alleged abuse. The mother and her boyfriend have been arrested after police said the boy was beaten and hung up by his shirt because he defecated into an ice bucket. Cuomo said Thursday, “It should remind us all that what government does matters, and when government fails, there are consequences.” (New York Daily News)
Want to be in a movie? None other than Spike Lee will give you the chance. Face it, you’ve perused Netflix on Friday nights and thought to yourself, I could do this. Well, now you can test your faith. Lee, the director of Do the Right Thing, has put out an open casting call for She’s Gotta Have It, a 10-episode reboot of his 1986 debut on a Brooklyn artist questioning the restrictions of monogamy. Tryouts for the Netflix series start next week in Fort Greene. (DNAinfo)
More on movies: New York will become the first major city in the county to finance female movie- and theater- producers with public funds. The program will create a $5 million fund for movies, films and plays about women, sponsoring burgeoning artists with access to directors and financial backing. “Whether they were directors or writers or characters onscreen, we’re simply not seeing as many women get to the top of their field as men, and we felt that it was our duty to address that,” said Julie Menin, the commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. (The New York Times)
It wouldn’t take too much of this fudge to make you sick. A Brooklyn man stepping off a plane from Trinidad was arrested inside John F. Kennedy International Airport for trying to smuggle a kilo of cocaine into the country. Authorities asked to see his boxes of Tortuga chocolate rum fudge then found a white powdery substance beneath the chocolatey exterior; it tested positive for cocaine. (New York Daily News)
