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Police officers investigate the southwest corner of Louis Armstrong Stadium Thursday after a drone flew over the court
NEW YORK » A high school science teacher was arrested Friday after a drone plummeted into empty seats and caused a scare at the U.S. Open tennis tournament.
Daniel Verley was arrested on reckless endangerment and other charges in the drone crash during a women’s singles match Thursday night, police said. Verley, 26, was released with an appearance ticket for a Sept. 16 court date.
There was no immediate answer to a message left Friday on a possible phone number for Verley, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could comment on the charges.
The drone buzzed diagonally over the court in Louis Armstrong Stadium before plummeting into the seats during the next-to-last game of a second-round match that 26th-seeded Flavia Pennetta of Italy won 6-1, 6-4 over Monica Niculescu of Romania. U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Chris Widmaier said no one was injured.
Pennetta said she wasn’t sure what the object was and thought it might have been a bomb when she heard it fly by.
"A little bit scary, I have to say," she said. "With everything going on in the world … I thought, ‘OK, it’s over.’ That’s how things happen."
Pennetta’s coach and physical therapist, sitting in the opposite side of the stadium from the area where the drone crashed, were frightened, too, the player said.
The drone broke into pieces upon landing, and the match was briefly interrupted between points while police and fire department personnel went to look at the device.
"All of these (security measures), and then it comes in from above," said Pennetta, whose match had been moved to the roughly 10,000-seat stadium from a much smaller court because other matches finished early. "If there had been spectators, it would have hit them and done a lot of damage."
The New York Police Department said security at the U.S. Open was already tight before the drone crashed and would remain so.
Verley was flying the drone from outside the tennis center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, police said. He turned himself in.
He has taught at the Academy of Innovative Technology in Brooklyn since 2013. The city Education Department said it would monitor the criminal case to decide whether to bring disciplinary action against him.
It was business as usual Friday at the tournament, where some of the thousands of spectators hadn’t even heard about the drone.
"That’s crazy!" said Jan Bialostocki, 21, of Gdansk, Poland, who had been watching a different match at the tournament when the drone crashed.
