MANHATTAN – We now know what caused the commotion on Second Avenue that sent FDNY firefighters racing to the intersection at East 60th Street on Sunday night— and it certainly wasn’t a 30-car pileup with a dozen pedestrian injuries as erroneously reported by the Citizen App in a ‘verified’ alert to more than 89-thousand people.
Video from 7:09 pm Sunday— four minutes before Citizen App’s first alert of a pileup— shows several cars parked in traffic on Second Avenue, their drivers and passengers getting out as another blasted the song ‘Thriller’ so loud, it sounds like music added to a video— not background noise.
“A group of cars playing insanely loud Halloween music stopped and started getting out and causes a massive traffic jam for about 20 min,” the neighbor exclusively told Upper East Site.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Citizen App Alerts 89k to False ‘Verified’ Report of 30-Car Pileup with 12 Injured on UES
“It was ridiculous and my top floor apartment was like shaking from the music,” the neighbor added, noting that “emergency response vehicles had a hard time getting through and finally cops came and shooed everyone out.”
Contact [email protected] | SubscribeThe neighbor’s video paints a very different picture than the mass casualty incident described by the Citizen App and alerted to more than 89-thousand New Yorkers.
The first notification from Citizen came at 7:13 pm— four minutes after video showing the ‘Thriller’ street party was recorded— and stated “firefighters and EMS units have received an unconfirmed report of appoximately [sic] 12 people who have been struck by a 30 car pile-up.”
Eight minutes later at 7:21 pm Citizen ‘verified’ the story when a user streamed live video from an apartment building across the street from the Subway Inn— at the corner of Second Avenue and East 60th Street— showing just two firetrucks in front.
At the intersection itself, Upper East Site found no sign of a mass casualty incident, pileup or anything that could be confused for one. FNDY officials later confirmed to Upper East Site what we could see with our own eyes– “Incident unfounded.”
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More than sixteen hours after the first notification by Citizen, the incident remains on the app— still marked as ‘verified.’
Upper East Site reached out to Citizen App to find out how their ‘verified’ report could be so wrong, we’re waiting to hear back.
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