^^^^^^. 1995 NY TIMES ARTICLE ON STRING OF SUBWAY FIRE ROBBERY INCIDENTS.....
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Harry P. Kaufman, the subway token clerk who suffered devastating burns and lung damage two weeks ago when two men turned his Brooklyn booth into an exploding inferno in a botched robbery that replayed scenes from the movie "Money Train," died yesterday at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
His death -- the first of a city token clerk in a firebombing since 1988 -- came as two more fire attacks on token booths were reported, raising to seven the number of similar incidents since the Nov. 22 release of the film in which a pyromaniac sets token booths ablaze with flammable liquid.
No one was seriously hurt in the two weekend attacks -- one that set a small fire in a Queens token booth on Saturday night, and another in which a lighted match was thrown into a Brooklyn token booth yesterday afternoon. In both cases, the assailants escaped, damage was minor and the motives were murky.
In an incident last night at 10 P.M., a group of teen-agers poured liquid into a token booth inside a station on the G line at Metropolitan and Union Avenues in Brooklyn and threatened the clerk, the police said. Police officers arrived and arrested two of the suspects.
Later, the police learned that the liquid was beer, which the two youths had shoplifted from a nearby bodega, the police said. The youths, who the police did not believe were linked to the previous incidents, were charged with theft. Before last month, there had been 11 minor fire attacks on city token booths since 1988, and the recent attacks, though described by the police as apparently unrelated, have aroused charges that the $60 million Columbia Pictures movie has produced mindless, life-imitating-art violence.
Mr. Kaufman, who was 50 years old, had been in extremely critical condition since Nov. 26, when he suffered second- and third-degree burns over 80 percent of his body and severe lung injuries from smoke in the attack. He died at 9:05 A.M. yesterday, ending a 14-day fight for life during which his wife, Stella, and son, Adrian, 17, had been at his bedside daily.
"The family is devastated," said Myrna Manners, director of public affairs for the hospital. "It's a terrible tragedy for everyone, particularly at this time of the year when people look forward to the holidays. On behalf of the hospital, we wish to express our deepest sympathies to the family."
With the men who set Mr. Kaufman ablaze still at large and similar but less serious attacks occurring almost every other day, the death deepened the tragedy of a case that has reverberated with charges from Washington to New York and Hollywood as the Senate Majority Leader, Bob Dole, Columbia Pictures, City Hall, transit officials and others have juggled the blame for what happened.
Mr. Kaufman's wife and son left the hospital without making any statement and returned to their home in Midwood, Brooklyn, late in the afternoon. They remained in seclusion last night as a steady stream of relatives and friends arrived to pay their respects and left quietly.
In the family's only comment, Mrs. Kaufman's sister, Dorothy Taylor, said: "She's holding on strong."
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A saxophone wailed in the basement last night and a neighbor, Nathaniel Thomas 3d, said that Adrian Kaufman was practicing for his father's funeral on Wednesday.
Mr. Kaufman, who had worked for the Transit Authority for 22 years and was trying to make extra money to send his son to college, was working a Sunday overtime shift two weeks ago at the Kingston-Throop Avenue station in Bedford-Stuyvesant when two men approached his booth at 1:40 A.M.
One squirted a flammable liquid through the token slot and ignited it with a match. It exploded with such force that the booth was blown apart, and Mr. Kaufman was engulfed in flames. The assailants fled, leaving behind a charred glove and a loaded rifle that suggested one attacker had been burned and that their motive had been robbery.
An automatic fire-extinguishing system that releases halon gas to smother flames had not worked, apparently because a light-heat sensor had been covered. Transit officials did not blame Mr. Kaufman, but said subway clerks sometimes covered the sensors to smoke on duty, which is against regulations.
From the start, doctors said Mr. Kaufman's chances of survival were minimal. Severe burns covered his whole body to just below the knees, and the damage to his lungs was even worse, according to Dr. Michael Madden, clinical director of the burn center at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.
Mr. Kaufman could not breathe without the aid of a respirator, doctors said, and he was under heavy pain-killing sedatives.
Mr. Kaufman's wife and son, a student at La Guardia High School for the Performing Arts, were at his bedside daily, swathed in paper gowns to guard against infection. Hundreds of calls and letters were received by the family and the hospital, many from strangers offering their prayers and hopes.
The precise cause of Mr. Kaufman's death is to be determined by an autopsy by the Medical Examiner's office.
Meantime, the manhunt for the two men who attacked Mr. Kaufman continued. One was said to have been 18 to 25, black, about 6 feet tall and wearing a brown jacket and green sweater. The other was described only as 5 feet 6 inches tall. The police called their investigation aggressive, but no progress was reported yesterday and there appeared to be no imminent breakthroughs.
A report shortly after the attack had suggested that the police knew the nickname of one assailant and that they might be closing in on the suspects. Several people, including one man who had been boasting of his involvement, were picked up and interrogated but later released.
Recounting the latest attacks on token booths, the police quoted Rhonda Jackson, 27, a clerk at the IRT Hunters Point station in Long Island City, Queens, as saying that as she was about to step out of her booth just before 9 P.M. Saturday flames and smoke rose up in her booth. She said she saw no one, but the police later found a plastic bottle containing gasoline nearby. She was treated at the City Hospital Center at Elmhurst for trauma and smoke.
Shortly after 3 P.M. yesterday, the police said, a man threw a lighted match into a booth at the BMT station at Union Street and Fourth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The clerk was not hurt, no demand for money was made, and the match-thrower, who wore a brown jacket, escaped on a southbound R train.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 11, 1995, Section B, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Token Clerk In Fire Attack Dies of Burns.
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