Metro

Intruder scales fence at Port Newark and falls asleep in ship captain’s bed

A man scaled a six-foot security fence at Port Newark yesterday, then climbed aboard a freighter — where he was found four hours later asleep in the captain’s bed, The Post has learned.

The latest in a shocking series of security breaches at Port Authority facilities began at 11 a.m. when the intruder, described as emotionally disturbed, was spotted by a longshoreman going over the fence.

Despite the man’s unorthodox entrance, the worker apparently assumed the intruder was a colleague.

Any doubt vanished when the trespasser, identified by cops as Eric Carrero, strolled up the gangplank of the cargo ship Adromeda Leader as cars from Japan were being unloaded.

None of the other workers on the ship of fools at first realized a stranger was in their midst, even though Carrero had no federally issued “transportation worker identification card’’ hanging from around his neck.

Later, a couple of workers did notice that Carrero, 20, was not wearing a TWIC card, and challenged him.

But the quick-thinking suspect told them he was the captain’s nephew, a story they readily bought, sources said.

At 3:15 p.m., someone discovered him on Capt. K.P. Rameshnair’s bed, on the ship’s top level.

Finally, PA cops were called, and Carrero bizarrely announced that he “hated this country and wanted to get out of here and go to Germany,’’ according to a source.

The barbed-wire-topped section of the fence he had scaled is only a few hundred feet from a booth staffed by private security guards working for a company under contract to the PA.

PA spokesman Steve Coleman later said, “We immediately began an investigation into this incident, as soon as PA police apprehended this individual.’’

Carrero was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

In other recent PA incidents:

* A jet skiier who ran out of gas in Jamaica Bay earlier this month swam to Kennedy Airport, where he crossed two runways before asking a baggage handler for help.

* In July 2011, a nude swimmer scaled a fence near the airport’s fuel-storage facility.