Waterfall Tale: A Photographer, a Man and a Gun
It was probably not the kind of viewer response that Olafur Eliasson expected for his public art display “Waterfalls.” But this week, a quirky tale of the city unfolded along the waterfront when a Manhattan photographer noticed a man aiming a handgun across the river at the waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge.
Around 1 p.m. on Monday, the photographer, Bryan Raughton, was walking along the East River from the South Street Seaport to Market Street, chronicling the waterfall under the bridge, one of four locations for the temporary cascades, and the tourists who had come to see it.
Then, through his viewfinder he noticed a man at the water’s edge and the end of a gun.
“He had his arm outstretched, and he was holding it straight out horizontally, with his right hand, and it looked like he was taking aim across the river, like he was going to shoot the waterfall,” said Mr. Raughton, a 35-year-old photographer and concierge at the Pod Hotel.
“And I thought, ” he said. “There was a guy, and the guy had a gun five feet away from all those tourists.” He‘That can’t be good,’ was standing on a sandy embankment near some tourists on an elevated walkway.
“When I said, ‘He has a gun,’ they didn’t seem to understand,” he said.
Mr. Raughton called the police and then took a series of shots that captured the arrival of plainclothes and uniformed police officers to arrest the man at 1:14 p.m. Tourists and passers-by stopped in their tracks.
The man, a 47-year-old homeless man, was arrested on suspicion of weapons possession, the police said on Thursday. The police said the man told them that he had found the 9-millimeter handgun at the waterside. It turned out to be covered with barnacles and was unworkable, the police said.
At first Mr. Raughton had noticed with slight alarm a bag abandoned at the water’s edge. “I was taking photos of a blue bag and my friend said, ‘If you see something, say something.’ ” After they then saw the gun in the man’s hand, they tried to figure out how to give the police directions.
“We were trying to figure out the cross streets at the South Street Seaport,” he said.
“Within five minutes, plainclothes officers were coming out of the woodwork,” he said. It was interesting to see how fast the response time was for a man with a gun. Maybe it’s because of heightened security for the fourth of July.”
“They walked up and made themselves very clear from 20 or 30 feet out that he had to drop the gun,” Mr. Raughton said. “One guy just jumped over the fence. He went right over, and within a second he took the guy down. The guy was really submissive.
“He wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t resisting, it seemed like it came to a screeching halt.”
Mr. Raughton, who lives on Market Street in Chinatown, said he had been chronicling New York City street scenes since 2000.
That day, he took the rest of the day off.
“I decided I was going to go home and just chill.”
