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The man entered the cathedral just before 8 p.m. but was turned away by a church security officer, according to John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. As the man exited, some gasoline spilled on the floor.
The security officer then notified two police officers outside the cathedral, who caught up to the man and began to question him. While he was cooperative, his answers were inconsistent and evasive, Miller said at a news conference.
“His basic story was that he was cutting through the cathedral to get to Madison Avenue, that his car had run out of gas,” Miller said. “We took a look at the vehicle. It was not out of gas, and at that point he was taken into custody.”
The man was also carrying two bottles of lighter fluid and two extended butane lighters, Miller said. The man was uninjured and the church was undamaged.
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“The individual was stopped as he tried to come into the cathedral,” the Archdiocese of New York said in a statement. The man, the statement continued, “was turned over to the police. Nothing happened inside the cathedral.”
Charges were not immediately filed against the man, whose name the police did not release. “He is known to police,” Miller said, without elaborating.
The episode drew a heavy police presence. About a dozen officers gathered on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan, while another officer directed traffic at the corner. Another half-dozen officers stood outside the entrance to the church.
The encounter happened two days after a fire tore through the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, one of that city’s most famous monuments. Investigators are still looking into the specific cause of that fire, though it was believed to be accidental.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral seats about 2,200 people and opened its doors in May 1879.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.