Today's Edition Of Shooters Shoot: MBTA Trolley Operator Pays His Buddy 2K To Dress As Michael Myers And Attack Him So He Can Collect Unemployment

Boston Magazine - A spooky Halloween attack on an MBTA trolley operator in 2016—which sparked a search for a suspect dressed up like the horror movie character Michael Myers—was a hoax, authorities announced on Thursday. According to the Suffolk District Attorney’s office, the whole thing was a ruse devised by the T employee, 47-year-old Thomas Lucey, of Saugus, to collect disability and workers’ compensation. Lucey was indicted Wednesday on charges of fraud and perjury, the DA’s office said in a joint announcement with the MBTA Transit Police Thursday. In case you’ve forgotten about this bizarre incident, the attack came just after midnight on October 30, 2016 at the Cedar Grove Station on the Mattapan Trolley line. The T operator, now identified as Lucey, reported that a man wearing a jumpsuit and mask from the Halloween pulled him out onto the station platform and viciously attacked him, “without provocation,” before fleeing. Except officials now say it wasn’t a horrifying random act of violence, as we were led to believe. Authorities were soon able to identify the suspect as an associate of Lucey’s, who later told them Lucey paid him $2,000 to take part in the stunt—a transaction police confirmed with bank records, the release says. Phone records also showed the two had communicated before the allegedly phony attack, according to the announcement. The alleged collaborator has not been named publicly.

You know that expression shooters shoot? I’m pretty sure this is what whoever invented that phrase had in mind. Like yeah it’s illegal to pay your buddy to dress up as Michael Myers on Halloween and say he savagely attacked you so you can collect unemployment from the MBTA for the rest of your life.  But at the same time I ain’t even remotely mad at him for trying.  I mean being a MBTA trolley operater has to be so depressing.  Just a horrific way to go through life.  I can’t imagine waking up every day and knowing you have to do that for the next 30 years of your miserable life.  So you either just accept your fate or you try to do something about it. Like I said. Shooters shoot indeed.