Woman Who Threw Bugs on Subway Apologizes Right Before NYPD Arrests Her

A New York City woman who caused hysteria among commuters when she unleashed hundreds of crickets and worms on a crowded subway train was arrested Tuesday as she tearfully apologized for the stunt.

Zaida Pugh, 21, will be charged with reckless endangerment following the incident on the D train, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters, according to DNAinfo. Pugh was pretending to be a homeless woman trying to sell a carton of insects when one of her two young accomplices, posing as strangers, smacked the box and sent the bugs hurling at other passengers.

“She put people at risk. [They] could have had heart attacks, people could have had all kinds of issues. [They could be] emotionally scarred from that,” Boyce said.

Pugh, who calls herself an actress, has said she pulled the performance as a “social experiment” to highlight the plight of the city’s homeless people. “I just really had a dream and I wanted it to go far. I wanted to spread messages out there. But I didn’t want it to happen like this,” she said in an emotional Facebook Live video on Tuesday.

Pugh apologized for the havoc she caused, adding that she has received death threats over the incident. “Those of you that want me dead and want the worst to happen to me, I’m going to make you happy by just deleting everything,” she said.

She appeared on Good Day New York on Monday, telling the show’s hosts that she brought about 300 crickets and more than 200 worms onto the train.