Woman Who Flung Bugs in the Subway Taken Into Custody

NEW YORK, NY — The self-proclaimed actress who threw crickets and worms everywhere on a subway car at rush hour was taken into custody by police early Tuesday afternoon, according to an NYPD spokesperson. There were no charges filed against her as of Tuesday at 1:45 p.m., the NYPD said.

Zaida Pugh, the woman who pulled the prank last Wednesday to make a statement about how the public treats people with mental illness, filmed a Facebook live Tuesday morning saying she was afraid for her life because of the angry backlash against her.

"There are people that really hate me…probably want me dead," she said. "I don't want that. That's not the type of attention I wanted…I just really had a dream and I wanted it to go far. I wanted to spread messages out there, and I didn't want it to happen like this."

Commenters on her Facebook live were torn. "Lord help me if I was on that train because I'm terrified of bugs. Without The bugs would've been ok or more acceptable. You have to understand that there are people out there that would go into cardiac arrest when you release them bugs," one commenter wrote.

"People don't hate you Zaida, you have a lot of people who follow you, stay strong and stuff the haters," another wrote.

When the police found out it was a prank, they sought a warrant for her arrest, the New York Post reported. NYPD Chief Robert Boyce said Tuesday:

We thought she was an emotionally disturbed person, we took her to the hospital. She went out and made further statements to the press that she'd done this on purpose. She put people at risk, [they] could have had heart attacks. People could have had all kinds of issues, [been] emotionally scarred from that. She's going to be charged with a misdemeanor. If she speaks to us that's great. If she doesn't, that's great, too.

Pugh caused a panic on the D train last week when she started screaming and threw crickets and worms everywhere, and she urinated on the train and pretended to throw up when some men tried to hold her down. A passenger pulled the emergency brake, and the train car came to a halt on the Manhattan Bridge. Passengers were anxious in a car full of jumping insects and no air conditioning. Several police officers were at the DeKalb stop waiting to take her into custody when the train car arrived at the station. They gave her a psychiatric evaluation and didn't charge her.

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