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MAN TRIES TO THROW SHOE DURING MTA MEETING

All he wanted to say was that the fare-hiking MTA board chairman is a heel.

Cops, fearing a rerun of an Iraqi reporter’s double-shoe toss at President Bush, tackled and arrested an enraged Queens straphanger today as he went to pull off his shoe while making a point to agency chief Elliot Sander.

Iraq’s Parliament Speaker Quits Over Shoe

“You made $300,000 last year and this shoe is for you,” barked Stephen Millies, 54, an Amtrak worker who lives in Jackson Heights.

MTA police grabbed Millies just as he had wiggled the shoe off his foot.

Before the other shoe dropped, cops hauled him from the meeting room and took him to their police station next door at Grand Central Terminal.

“My shoe is a sign of contempt,” Millies said as he was taken away. “[Sander] wants to raise fares for disabled people – that’s contemptible. And I’m not even allowed to show him my shoe.”

MTA police gave Millies a desk appearance ticket for disorderly conduct. By early afternoon, he was back home in Jackson Heights, getting ready for his shift in a signal tower in Amtrak’s Sunnyside yard.

“They actually asked me what size my shoe was,” Millies said. His Red Wing work shoe was a 10 1/2 D.

Millies insists he didn’t plan an Iraqi-type footwear fling – he just wanted to brandish his shoe, Nikita Khrushchev-style, to make a point.

But he admitted his move was “pretty close to spontaneous.”

“I didn’t want to hit anyone,” he said. “I simply wanted to show the sole of my shoe to prove a point, that Elliot Sander has the nerve to raise fares on the disabled when he made $300,000 last year.”

“They obviously try to stop any sign of resistance,” he said of the MTA cops. “I obviously did not have any intention to hit anyone. I simply wanted to show my contempt.”

Sander said he was “a little concerned” when he saw Millies reach for the shoe.

“I saw that our MTA police had the situation well under control and responded very quickly,” he said. “In terms of my personal safety, it happened real fast.

“I’ve never had anyone attempt to throw a shoe at me,” he went on. “And I didn’t anticipate that that possibly could take place when I was offered this position. But it’s the MTA and anything can happen.”