Ex-con accused of sparking fire that led to MTA train operator’s death charged with murder

An ex-con long considered a suspect in a March fire that led to a heroic MTA train operator’s death was charged with murder Friday, police said.

Suspect Nathaniel Avinger, 50, quickly became a person of interest after he was busted for starting a fire two weeks earlier outside a Columbia University dorm.

But he was never charged with the deadly March 27 blaze that took No. 2 train operator Garrett Goble’s life.

Goble, 36, rushed commuters out of the train as flames spread from a shopping cart on the tracks of the 110th St./Central Park North station.

He got lost in the smoke-filled tunnel and collapsed, possibly from a heart attack, sources said.

An MTA train operator was found dead on the subway tracks in Harlem after evacuating riders early Friday, March 27, 2020 from a smoky and suspicious subterranean blaze aboard an uptown train.
An MTA train operator was found dead on the subway tracks in Harlem after evacuating riders early Friday, March 27, 2020 from a smoky and suspicious subterranean blaze aboard an uptown train. (Obtained by Daily News)

Avinger’s arraignment was pending in Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday.

Sources said he was just released from a mental institution and got on cops’ radar after he was busted Wednesday for groping a woman train conductor in Brooklyn.

He made statements that linked him to the deadly March arson during questioning, police said.

A woman who identified herself as Avinger’s relative told the Daily News in March that he jumped from shelter to shelter and had a brother in Houston.

Delilah Rodriguez, tending to her 5-month-old son, waited all night for a call that never came. Her husband, MTA train operator Garrett Goble, checked in regularly with his wife during breaks on his overnight shift. But her phone never rang early Friday, and her worst fears were quickly confirmed: The 36-year-old father of two boys died shortly after rescuing overnight riders on the No. 2 train from a smoky blaze on the tracks beneath W. 110th St.
Delilah Rodriguez, tending to her 5-month-old son, waited all night for a call that never came. Her husband, MTA train operator Garrett Goble, checked in regularly with his wife during breaks on his overnight shift. But her phone never rang early Friday, and her worst fears were quickly confirmed: The 36-year-old father of two boys died shortly after rescuing overnight riders on the No. 2 train from a smoky blaze on the tracks beneath W. 110th St. (Obtained by Daily News)

Avinger served prison time for a 2013 robbery conviction, public records show.

“The New York City Transit Authority has grieved and mourned Garrett Goble every single day for the last 9 months. Nothing will bring Garrett back to NYCT or to his sweet family,” NYCT Interim President Sarah Feinberg said in a statement Friday.

“There should be no tolerance for any form of violence in our transit system. Fires, sexual assaults, assaults on our workers – these are crimes committed against the very best of New York – the brave men and women who show up and serve this city each day and keep us all moving forward,” Feinberg said.

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