A Queens man inexplicably turned up on Jones Beach yesterday, wearing a wetsuit, packing a gun — and mumbling that he’d just spent three days adrift on a raft.
“All of a sudden, I see this big fella in a daze wandering along the boardwalk with a garbage bag over his body — he was easily 6-3 and over 300 pounds,” said Gary Smith of Wantagh.
“He was sopping wet and covered in sand.
“He didn’t look quite right,” added Smith, who was on his daily walk when he spotted an incoherent Pablo Perez, 47, of Flushing, Queens, at 6:15 a.m.
“I asked him where he came from, and he said he’d been out on a raft for the last three days.
“He told me he was fishing and that his raft was tied to another boat and became detached and he drifted out to sea.”
Smith told Perez he was going to call 911.
“Then he suddenly tells me that he has a gun, and he started to take it out,” Smith said. “And I said, ‘Whoa, buddy, why don’t you just keep it where it is for now.’ ”
Cops had to cut the gun out of Perez’s black wetsuit.
It was a loaded, unlicensed .25-caliber semiautomatic, and Perez was charged with criminal possession of a weapon.
Police later found a 9-foot raft nearby.
Perez was hospitalized for dehydration and exhaustion.
State Park Police Chief Richard O’Donnell called the situation “a very unusual incident,” adding, “We’re trying to clear up what happened.”