How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
1 University Place
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The area near 1 University Place was blocked off around 6:30 p.m. as members of the NYPD attempted to reach two men who had barricaded themselves in an apartment. Many people gathered to watch the event transpire.
At first, there were conflicting reports as to the nature of the dispute. A resident in the building claimed a dispute between a couple had escalated into a hostage situation. Members of the Hostage Negotiation Team were on site, but one HNT representative said the two brothers had too much to drink. The NYPD had also set up an inflatable cushion as a precaution against a possible suicide attempt.
Following several hours of negotiating, the HNT took the two into custody and later transferred them to a nearby hospital, the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Information later confirmed.
DCPI also refuted reports of a hostage situation and said the two brothers were emotionally unstable and under the influence of alcohol.
Although DCPI could not release the names of the men, footage from a video taken by a resident of the building showed armed police officers calling for two men named Ricardo and Roberto.
Steinhardt freshman and Weistein resident Mithila Saraf remembered the night.
"Nobody knew what was actually happening," she recalled. "But soon the police had everyone clear the street and then it got kind of severe. I think within an hour and a half we realized that the situtaion was actually grave."
"It was just kind of crazy, we really didn't know what was going on," CAS freshman Erik Sherman said. "But it was very cool to see how the NYPD responded so quickly to something, and you know, just weird how in the first week something crazy's happened right next to our dorm. It's nothing that makes you want to quit NYU," the Weinstein resident added.
10th and University
The NYPD responded to a call from a person who discovered a suspicious package in a planter. After arriving on the scene, members of the NYPD and a bomb squad sectioned off areas between Ninth and 10th streets and University Place and Broadway.
Residents in Brittany residence hall, located on 10th Street between Broadway and University Place, were not affected by the incident.
Officials later discovered that the suspicious item, which resembled a pipe bomb, was actually a piece of PVC pipe filled with sand.
Neither of the two incidents has altered Saraf's perception of NYU but she wishes the university had informed students of the two situations more quickly.
"Nothing has really changed, beause I sort of knew these kinds of things happen," she said. "But this morning, the kind of rumors that I've been hearing, I don't know what is true and what is not. [The university] can't give us the details probably, but something to calm us down, to calm the rumors down, that would have been better."
