The Madman on the Ferry

Released from a hospital, a mental patient kills two people

Just one day after the Liberty Weekend harbor festival, the ferry Samuel I. Newhouse was carrying some 500 passengers -- including a number of diehard tourists -- on its 8:30 a.m. run from Manhattan to Staten Island. Midway across New York harbor, just past the refurbished Statue of Liberty, a homeless Cuban refugee named Juan Gonzalez, 43, unsheathed a 2-ft. sword he had been carrying. Shouting incoherently, he began slashing and stabbing anybody who stood in his way. Retired New York City Police Officer Edward del Pino, 55, seeing panicky passengers stampeding past him on the ferry's deck, rushed inside in...

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