Washington Square Park again descended into bedlam and bloodshed Saturday, when a madman waving a Taser and a knife sparked a wild stampede that injured a woman who was “run over” by the scattering crowd, police said.
Jason McDermott, 42, stoked the latest panic when he allegedly brandished the pair of weapons in the midst of a squabble at around 12:40 a.m., as hundreds filled the Greenwich Village park during a booze- and drug-fueled rager — a now weekly bane for neighbors.
The victim was steamrolled amid the chaotic scramble for safety, witnesses said.
“I saw one guy following another guy. There was a Taser to his neck at one point. They were running away and probably slammed into the girl on accident,” she added. “Someone popped their mouth off and said something racist and another person clapped back and had a Taser. Some s-–t like that.”
She continued: “There just happened to be a woman in a tan dress, and she just looked like she was trying to get out of the way . . . when the crowd comes behind her and completely slams her to the ground.”
The 43-year-old victim is seen in disturbing photographs showing her face and dress covered in blood. She was taken to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition with cuts, scrapes and bruises and later released, cops said.
McDermott, of The Bronx, was arrested and charged with menacing, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon, cops said. He was under observation at Bellevue later in the day.
No one else was hurt, and the park remained open, cops said.
The stampede is just the latest in a series of troubling events amid increasing outrage over repeated incidents of violence and plummeting quality-of-life.
“This administration has failed not only the taxpayers and local residents, it’s also failed the drug addicted and the mentally ill,” said William Abramson, of Buchbinder & Warren Realty Group, the landlord for hundreds of residential and retail properties near the park.
Hundreds of locals packed the basement of Our Lady of Pompeii Church on Carmine Street this week for an emergency meeting about the mushrooming crisis — as police officials promised to “address” their growing concerns.
“This is complete electric madness,” said lifelong park neighbor Adam Weprin.
“Unfortunately, with the disarray and the craziness, you have people who are off-balance and this environment is only going to make them more off-balance. Until we can figure out how to take care of the mentally ill and take care of human beings better, that’s just the way it is.”
But even as neighbors beg the city and the NYPD to rescue the besieged green space, those who were among the partying horde shrugged off the chaos and said it would continue.“
They can try their hardest, but look at how many people are here,” said Olivia Stevens, an 18-year-old college student from New Jersey, who comes to the park “because the suburbs are boring and my friends and I have nothing else to do.”
“Nothing is going to stop us from showing up,” she said.
And defund-the-NYPD backer and Democratic mayoral primary candidate Maya Wiley doubled down on the notion that no restrictions were needed in the park, where a 10 p.m. curfew was lifted last week. “It’s a public park. We don’t need a curfew,” she said.
“What we need is mental-health outreach workers who are getting folks into services and support they need.”
Primary front-runner Eric Adams, an ex-cop, took a tougher stance, insisting the downward spiral must be reversed.
“Our parks should not be used for drugs. It should not be used for violence,” he told The Post on the campaign trail in Queens.
Adams suggested a three-week intervention that’s part of a larger plan.
“Going in there with service providers, use it as a positive to find out how to bring people into the services they need and then set a strong date where we’re gonna clean up the park.”
Meanwhile, McDermott’s family claimed he lost his job during the pandemic and has had trouble finding help for his chronic emotional disorders.
“[Jason] tried to commit suicide twice in recent weeks and went to St. Barnabas looking for help,” said his brother James. “They just bandage his wrists and send him on his way.”
Additional reporting by Kieran Ungernach, Len La Rocca, Joe Marino and Jonathan Levine
