LINCOLN CENTER — A white, powdery substance found at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center Saturday night may have been ashes spread by an audience member to memorialize a dead mentor, police said.
Saturday night's performance of "Guilluame Tell," an "epic telling of the William Tell fable" at the Met Opera, was interrupted when a man sprinkled the suspicious powder, causing a commotion that ultimately cancelled the opera, according to police and witnesses on social media.
As are all of our instruments! 🎻🎺🎸☹️ https://t.co/nhn2VK4IMs
— METOrchMusicians (@METOrchestra) October 29, 2016
Police interviewed witnesses and discovered that the man may have been a tourist trying to honor a lost mentor, according to Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller.
“We’ve spoken to more than one witness who said they spoke to an individual from out of town who indicated that he was here to sprinkle ashes of a friend, his mentor in opera, during the performance," Miller said during a press conference Saturday night. "So that is certainly an area that we are pursuing.”
Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & @NYPDCT John Miller speaking on incident at Lincoln Center tonight. pic.twitter.com/3yKPYEYFz2
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) October 30, 2016
Officials from the city Department of Environmental Protection were conducting field tests to identify the substance Saturday night, Miller said. The powder would then be removed to another location for more extensive tests by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, he added.
