On Thursday, the New York County District Attorney’s office indicted Jason Wright on multiple charges arising from the April 24 shooting at Battery Place and Washington Street that left two people injured.
New York City police officers had tracked down and arrested Mr. Wright in Brookyln within 72 hours of the incident, after multiple informants identified him from a surveillance video released by investigators. (In a separate surveillance video, taken shortly before his arrest, Mr. Wright was observed showing off the gun used in the shooting, police say.) He was arraigned Thursday on multiple counts of attempted murder and assault, and is now being held without bail.
Both Mr. Wright and one of the people who was shot on April 24 were ticket sellers in nearby Battery Park, where legions of aggressive hawkers peddle to tourists sometimes-fraudulent passes to boats rides and attractions like the State of Liberty. Competition between these sellers is often intense, and sometimes turns violent.
In a related development, City Council member Margaret Chin is calling upon the Department of Education (DOE) to standardize “lockdown” procedures for public schools when a hazardous condition exists nearby. Ms. Chin led an rally of parents and community leaders a few days after the shooting incident, in which she said, “our City has an obligation to do all it can to protect everyone who lives, works and goes to school here. We must act now to address the growing problem of ticket sellers harassing, intimidating and, with this most recent display of violence, shooting at each other and anyone unlucky enough to cross their path.”
Ms. Chin also led a coalition of local elected officials (including Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, State Assembly members Deborah Glick and Yuh-Line Niou, and State Senator Daniel Squadron) in writing on April 29 to DOE and police officials, saying, “according to a number of school administrators in the surrounding community, NYPD school safety officers were not informed about the incident for a period of time ranging from hours to a day after the shooting occurred. One of the schools had students shelter in place only because a parent informed an administrator about the incident as it happened.” The elected officials added, “when these incidents occur, schools and their safety officers in the surrounding area should be the first ones to be notified. We rely on them to protect our children, and without the proper information, they are unable to do their jobs.”
Mr. Wright, whom prosecutors say previously served ten years in New York State prison on a manslaughter conviction, is part of a small army of tour ticket sellers in Battery Park who have been involved in a series of violent clashes and other crimes in recent months. Last fall, a pair of vendors were accused of assaulting a tourist who refused to buy the tickets they were selling. In May, police officers arrested more than a dozen sellers for offering fake tickets to unsuspecting tourists. (In some cases, tickets for boats that tour the harbor are sold under the false promise that they will stop at the Statue of Liberty. In other cases, the tickets are simply worthless counterfeits. A third scam involves selling bogus, expensive tickets to the Staten Island Ferry, which is free.) And in February, 2016, a man and woman believed to be romantically linked, but who worked for competing tour services, became involved in a violent altercation, which ended when the woman attacked her boyfriend with a stun gun. In a second incident in that same month, another couple selling tickets attacked a tourist who refused to buy from them, fracturing his skull.
But even those ticket sellers arrested for what might be considered minor, quality-of-life offenses in Battery Park often turn out to have records of being charged with or convicted of serious crimes like rape, assault, drug dealing, and robbery. A 2016 police investigation found that several of the companies that deploy ticket sellers to Battery Park make it a practice to hire people who have recently been released from prison, and are in many cases on parole or probation. (Such individuals are often willing to take on low-wage work under unpleasant conditions, because they are required to show employment as a condition of their release.) Several of these companies are themselves run by convicts, and in one case, the enterprise was being managed by an owner while he was imprisoned at Rikers Island.