The woman released a cloud of crickets on the train before urinating on herself.

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Crazed woman flings crickets all over D train before peeing herself, sending subway riders into chaos

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Dan Rivoli Graham Rayman
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Thursday, August 25, 2016, 5:20 PM

A wacky woman released a cloud of crickets and urinated on herself in a subway train on the Manhattan Bridge, sending horrified straphangers into a frenzy.

The bizarre incident took place on a Brooklyn-bound D train about 6:05 p.m. Wednesday, police said.

“Woman just let crickets out on the D Train as we went over the Manhattan Bridge,” passenger Ezra Mechaber wrote. “Panic ensued. Someone pulled the E-Brake. Stuck. New York.”

The deranged woman opened and waved around the container of bugs, causing her fellow riders to freak, police said.

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“Her actions were making numerous other passengers uncomfortable,” an understated police source said.

Someone pulled the emergency brake, stalling the train on the Manhattan Bridge for 15 agonizing minutes.

The flying crickets caused one rider to throw up, the source said. Other riders fled the car.

Police and an MTA source said several straphangers moved in to try to restrain the woman.

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A passenger pulled the emergency brake on the D train as riders ran to escape the crickets.
(JJLouis / iStock)
“She was hysterical for 20 minutes and peed herself before the train operator unlocked the car doors to let us through,” Mechaber wrote. “Mass hysteria in a locked, enclosed space is something else.”

“Moving again now, cops meeting us at DeKalb,” Mechaber added. “Never seen a crowd get so panicked so fast. Everyone rush to the other side of the train.”

The train pulled into the DeKalb Ave. station about 6:30 p.m., where police took the woman into custody.

“Once the doors opened, people rushed out to get a look at the ‘Cricket Lady,’” said Gina Gabriel, who was in an adjacent car.

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“As the minutes passed and I realized we would not be moving any time soon, I hopped (no pun intended) to the R train across the platform, stealing a glance at the ‘cricket car’ on my way,” added Gabriel, 25, of Sunset Park. “On the floor of the empty car, there chirped a pile of crickets.”

The cricket carrier was taken to New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn for psychiatric observation, police said.

Nobody was injured in the mayhem.

 

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Metro

Viral subway cricket video was an elaborate prank
By Chris Perez and Joe Tacopino

August 26, 2016 | 9:07pm

Warning: Graphic language

The woman who caused a massive panic on a crowded subway train by releasing a swarm of crickets admitted to The Post on Friday that she orchestrated the disgusting stunt in an attempt to go viral on social media.

SEE ALSO





Straphangers go berserk after woman tosses bugs in subway car
“I have been doing these pranks for four years now,” self-promoting actress Zaida Pugh said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them.”

Pugh, known for a series of bizarre online pranks, said she brought 300 crickets and 300 worms onto the D train Wednesday and had a friend flip the insects into the air — freaking out those straphangers who hadn’t been in cahoots with her.

“Basically the people that is attacking me is a part of the stunt,” she said, adding her friends “also do their own comedy skits online as well.”

But things got even worse when an innocent passenger pulled the emergency brake as the D train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge. Riders were stuck in the cricket-filled car — with no air conditioning — for 30 minutes.

“The emergency brake was pulled,” Pugh said. “We were not expecting that to happen at all.”

Another unplanned aspect was Pugh urinating on the floor of the subway car.

“I did [urinate] but didn’t purposely mean to,” Pugh said. “It was very hot and I was holding my bladder. When I realized we weren’t going anywhere, I said, ‘I’m gonna just let it out.’ ”

She was taken to Methodist Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

She stayed in character as a homeless person trying to sell crickets, thinking that would help her avoid arrest.

But a police source told The Post that Pugh could be charged in connection with the chaos.

Zaida PughPhoto: Facebook
Straphangers were appalled to learn it was the work of a publicity hound.

“My father works for transit and he’s gonna have to be the person who cleans that car covered in urine and crickets and worms,” said Brooklyn resident Eddie Going.

“And you know what’s worse, the emergency brake was pulled. So essentially, one little gag caused thousands upon thousands of people their time, when they were trying to get home.”

Pugh defended the videos as way to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

“Not everybody is gonna like my pranks,” she said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them. People get mad, of course, but I will continue to do it until they wake up.”

She has posted several attention-grabbing online videos in the past — some more disturbing than others.

In 2015, she posted a bloody video that purported to show a woman stabbing her baby to death in an insane revenge plot on her boyfriend.

“#WTF “Mother” Kills her baby then post the video online for her baby father to see,” she wrote in tagging the video.

Additional reporting by Larry Celona