Meet Darius McCollum, a man who has been arrested on twenty-nine separate occasions for impersonating Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees in hopes of operating the city’s subways and busses. Because he loves them. He loves them too much.
In more recent developments his lawyer insists that many of McCollum’s repeated incidents are in fact a result of uncontrollable impulses attributed to Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that is often characterized by increased difficulties in social interaction as well as nonverbal communication. McCollum has stated:
I love the atmosphere, I love the lights, I love the signals. I love the fact that it’s moving all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There’s nothing negative I can say about the transit system.
At the moment McCollum’s lawyers are seeking to put together a new plan for parole that would allow the forty-eight-year-old man to attend regular group counseling and receive further medical treatment for his increasingly inconvenient habits.
