New York City

Runaway locomotive crushes five vehicles

A locomotive unhitched from a parked train and crashed into five vehicles while rolling through crossing points Wednesday, injuring four people.

The locomotive broke loose from a freight train undergoing an engine change at a repair area in an industrial section of Queens, said Long Island Rail Road spokesman Sam Zambuto. It traveled more than a mile before coming to a stop.

Two men were injured, one critically, when the locomotive hit a car as it went through the first intersection, Zambuto said.

The locomotive went through several city blocks before hitting a second car at another crossing. A third car was hit, but it was unclear where. A nun and a rabbi were injured in those crashes.

The train also hit two trucks parked on tracks at a repair area, setting one on fire, Zambuto said.

New York City

ImClone sues founder for unpaid tax bill

ImClone Systems sued its imprisoned founder for $26 million Wednesday, saying the company was forced to pay income taxes for Samuel Waksal after he failed to.

ImClone alleges Waksal — a longtime friend of Martha Stewart — cashed in $63 million in options and other stock-purchase rights in 1999 and 2001 that he received as compensation. The pharmaceutical company says it did not withhold taxes because it expected Waksal to take care of his own tax obligations.

Waksal, 56, is serving a seven-year sentence in federal prison after admitting he tipped his daughter to sell her ImClone shares based on advance word of a negative government report related to the company’s cancer drug, Erbitux.

That tip led to the arrest of Stewart, who was convicted last week of lying to federal investigators who suspected she sold her ImClone stock because she heard the Waksals were planning to sell theirs.

New Jersey

Three students raped near Rutgers University

A group of men wearing ski masks burst into an apartment near the Rutgers University campus, raped three women at gunpoint and fled, police said.

No arrests had been made in the attacks Monday.

“Every lead is being aggressively pursued,” said Sgt. Richard Rowe with the New Brunswick Police Department, which is conducting the investigation.

Campus police said at least two of the women were Rutgers students but Rowe would not confirm that any of the women were students.

Four men entered the ground floor apartment of a two-story house carrying a knife and a gun, police said. Eight people were in the apartment, including the three women who were assaulted, police said.

Authorities said the attackers also stole money and possessions, and punched a man who was in the apartment.

New York City

Student kills herself in plunge from high-rise

A 19-year-old New York University student committed suicide by jumping from the roof of her boyfriend’s off-campus apartment building, the fourth student from the school to die in a plunge this academic year.

Diana Chien, who transferred this semester from the University of California, Los Angeles, on Saturday jumped off the roof of the 24-story building in midtown Manhattan, police said.

The medical examiner ruled her death a suicide. Chien and her boyfriend, Christopher Lam, had a rocky relationship and Chien’s death was unrelated to problems at school, police said.

Two of the four falling deaths have been ruled suicides, the first among NYU students since 1996, according to the university. One death was ruled an accident and no determination has been made in the fourth case.