Times Square Sees Hundreds Panic as Motorcycle Backfire Mistaken for Gunfire After Mass Shootings

Backfiring motorcycle engines set Times Square into a panic on Tuesday night, with video capturing people running for safety from the tourist attraction. New York Police Department’s Midtown North district confirmed that the sounds were from motorcycles.

“Motorcycles backfiring while passing through sounded like gun shots,” the NYPD tweeted, adding that it received multiple 911 calls. “…Please don’t panic. The Times Square area is very safe!”

The Daniels Group, a construction firm, posted footage on Twitter of people fleeing Times Square.

Soon, frightened passers-by were screaming and banging on the doors of the Shubert Theater, on West 44th Street, trying to get in, actress Celia Keenan-Bolger wrote on Twitter. Keenan-Bolger was giving her final speech of the night as Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

“It was terrifying for us because we didn’t know what was happening or what to do,” she said.

Gideon Glick, who plays Dill Harris in the show, tweeted that the play had to be immediately stopped. “Screaming civilians tried to storm our theater for safety,” he wrote. “The audience started screaming and the cast fled the stage.”

One mother said she was briefly separated from her daughter amid the chaos. Bridget Siljander told NBC New York that she was coming out of a theater and “there was a big stampede, and people were screaming and crying and climbing over each other.”

“We were turning around to take a picture in Times Square, and we just see a herd of people screaming and yelling ‘shooter,’” Jade Crowe, who was visiting the popular tourist spot with her family, told NBC News.

“I was freaking out even more just because those two mass shootings that happened earlier in the week — that’s just where your mind automatically goes to,” she added.

At least one pedestrian was injured from a fall while running during the scare, police said.

Keenan-Bolger wrote that she was “still processing the whole experience.”

“But all I can think about are the young people who’ve had to go through the actual thing. The trauma and fear that they have had to ensure and what something like that does to a young person’s brain,” she added. “We cannot go online this.”

Photo credit: Stephen Chernin / Stringer / Getty