CENTRAL PARK — A college student visiting for the holiday weekend was wounded when he leapt down from a boulder in Central Park Sunday morning onto a set of "homemade fireworks" that someone had left behind, according to officials and reports.
Connor Golden, 18, a music engineering student at the University of Miami, was visiting NYC with two friends from Fairfax, VA., when the trio decided to visit Central Park, his friends told the New York Daily News. They were climbing on a collection of rocks near East 60th Street and Fifth Avenue shortly before 11 a.m. when Golden jumped down and unintentionally triggered the explosion, they told the paper.
"I was walking in front of him and suddenly heard this extremely loud explosion directly behind me. When I turned around, I saw Connor lying there, his foot completely gone,” Thomas Hinds, 20, told the New York Post on Sunday. "It was insane. He was moaning and saying, ‘Get help.’"
Golden was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition and was expected to undergo surgery.
Police said they did not believe the fireworks were left intentionally to injure others. NYPD spokesman J. Peter Donald said on Twitter Sunday that there was "no current, credible threat to NYC or the 4th of July festivities."
The trio are not considered suspects in the case, police said.
"We believe this could have been put here as some sort of experiment," NYPD Deputy Chief John O’Connell said at a press conference at the scene Sunday, according to the Daily News. "It is not unusual for the public to make or try to create fireworks around the Fourth of July, which is completely unadvisable."
Officials added that fireworks in any form can be hazardous.
See what happened yesterday in Central Park? What could be fireworks CAN be dangerous. #CentralPark https://t.co/rqYDnsFgCJ
— J. Peter Donald (@JPeterDonald) July 4, 2016
