The video was almost cartoonlike in its antics, something Wile E. Coyote might have conceived: a trapdoor to the street — really, an emergency exit for the subway — opens slowly and a head appears. Suddenly, a young man jumps out of his hiding spot, throws a smoke bomb toward Bar Pitti, a restaurant in the West Village, slides back into his rabbit hole and disappears.
While various theories — including a longstanding feud between the owners of Bar Pitti and a neighboring restaurant, Da Silvano — were being floated around the neighborhood as possible reasons for the episode on Friday, the police have not identified a motive or a suspect.
The police said the smoke bomb was a “commercially made pyrotechnic smoke generalizer that emitted a red smoke.” No injuries were reported, but the case raised security concerns for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Kevin Ortiz, the spokesman for the authority, said on Tuesday that the agency was still investigating how the young man had gotten to that emergency exit.
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