New York Stadiums Take Notice of Nationals Game
Shootings have, unfortunately, become a common news story. When shots being fired on the street outside a Major League Ballpark stop the baseball game going inside, the line between sports news and regular news gets blurred. When one of the innocent victims of the gun violence is a fan attending the game, that line gets blurrier.
According to reports by ESPN Saturday night "the game between the Padres and the Nationals was suspended in the sixth inning Saturday night after a shooting outside Nationals Park that caused echoes of gunfire inside the stadium and prompted fans to scramble for safety in the dugout." Fans had to hide in the dugouts. People who were supposed to be having fun were terrified.
"Apparently the shooting was an exchange of gunfire between people in two cars that left three people injured, according to Ashan Benedict, the Metropolitan Police Department's executive assistant police chief. One of the people shot was a woman attending the game who was struck while she was outside the stadium, he said. Her injuries weren't considered life-threatening," as reported by ESPN.com.
One of the umpires, crew chief Mark Carlson said, "It was just a chaotic scene...we heard what sounded like rapid gunfire. We didn't know where it was coming from."
Sunday the New York Post reported that New York Stadiums are on full alert and "have game plans in place to deal with emergencies such as the Saturday night shooting that hurled a Nationals Park baseball game into chaos, sources told The Post Sunday."
The article noted not surprisingly "Yankee Stadium, Citi Field, Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center all have contingency plans to evacuate fans en masse to designated areas around the venues, though declined to provide details citing security reasons." I am aware that there are similar plans in place for all of the major venues in the Capital Region. Unfortunately, you have to plan for more than the game these days. It's a sad day when you have to write about this in sports.