An emotionally disturbed man jumped from the upper level of a Staten Island Ferry boat into the chilly, choppy waters of New York Harbor Thursday — then fought efforts to rescue him, cops and witnesses said.
The Samuel I. Newhouse ferry had left the Whitehall Terminal in lower Manhattan at 1 p.m. and was nearing Staten Island when the unidentified man went overboard.
“At first, nobody noticed. Then everyone jumped from their seats and looked over the railing,” said Keith Stratford, 39, a tourist from the United Kingdom.
Stratford’s son Callum, 19, said, “The boat stopped and started backwards. Then we see him bobbing up and down.”
“I was like, ‘Is that a person?’ ” the elder Stratford said. “Everybody thought, ‘What’s he doing? Is he crazy?’ ”
Witnesses said a tugboat arrived first and its crew tried to fish the man out of the water, but he refused to be rescued.
“They threw a float at him, and he threw it back, several times!” Keith Stratford said. “Then they put down a ladder, but he was having none of it.”
An NYPD Harbor Unit and a Coast Guard boat soon arrived, witnesses said. Cops got a rope around the man and pulled him up aboard their boat.
A witness said the man appeared to have jumped from the back of the upper level of the three-story ferry. Another witness told the Staten Island Advance that the man put his arms out “like Superman” before he went overboard.
The man was conscious when he was seized by police. He was taken to Lutheran Medical Center, where he was listed in stable condition.
The Newhouse ferry is one of two “Barberi class” ships run by the ferry system. The other, the Andrew J. Barberi, was involved in serious accidents in 2003 and 2010.
Additional reporting by Dana Sauchelli
