NYPD officers brandishing sledgehammers and a riot gun shut down a busy street in Little Italy on Saturday night to retrieve a man who had barricaded himself inside an Italian restaurant.
Witnesses said the man claimed to be doing renovation work on Il Fornaio and refused multiple requests to leave. "He kept saying 'I'll be done at 8!' And he was picking up tiles and sort of moving them around," said Chris Ward, who was sitting at a nearby café when the first police officers began to arrive.
By 8:15 p.m., four Emergency Service Unit trucks were parked along Mulberry and Hester Streets. Deputy Chief James McNamara supervised the heavily armored officers as they prepared to enter the restaurant. "First we saw four cops walking in a uniform fashion with their Tasers out," Ward said. "And it snowballed into the full paramilitary assault you see before you."
A large crowd gathered to watch the relatively routine scene unfold (hundreds of barricaded suspect calls come in each month) as police rolled the police tape out to block Mulberry Street. After initially being granted access to observe the officers forcibly enter the building, we were shoved back behind the police line adjacent to the restaurant Da Gennaro. A man with a guitar strummed a tune on the street corner, and tourists posed for photos next to the flashing NYPD vehicles.
Later, a man approached the officer standing sentry at the police line. "Can we get through so we can eat there?" Da Gennaro's manager quickly appeared. "Sure, how many?" The police officer lifted the tape so the man and his companion could duck underneath it.
Around 8:20 p.m. police peacefully extracted the man from the empty restaurant, which did in fact appear to be closed for renovations. The man, who looked to be in his late thirties and was wearing a blue Adidas track suit, was strapped into a gurney to be taken to Bellevue Hospital. As police lifted him into the ambulance, he shouted, "I love you all!" The crowd cheered.
