St. John’s Rifleman Sick, Not Violent, Lawyer Says

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The St. John’s University student arrested yesterday as he was toting a rifle across the Queens campus wasn’t out to hurt anyone but is rather beset by mental health problems, his lawyer said today.

“My client is suffering badly from health issues — both mental and physical,” Mr. Colleluori said of the student, Omesh Hiraman, 22, who was arrested after being seen striding through campus wearing a Halloween mask and carrying a muzzle-loading rifle.

He added: “We know our client’s actions inadvertently made a lot of people upset, for that we are very upset for them. We don’t want anyone to have to go through this.”

Police said today that Mr. Hiraman will be charged with criminal possession of a weapon.

Classes resumed after the campus was locked down for several hours yesterday, but some students said they were still spooked by the incident as university sought today to return to normal.

A St. John’s freshman, Juan Sanchez, said he was not looking forward to going back to “an iffy situation.”

“At least no one got hurt, and hopefully Omesh Hiraman gets the help he needs,” Mr. Sanchez said in an e-mail.

An attorney for Mr. Hiraman, Anthony Colleluori, said his client was held at a hospital psychiatric ward this morning waiting his arraignment in Queens. He said the incident yesterday could be attributed to Mr. Hiraman’s troubled mental state, which he has said was exacerbated by a recent surgery and medication he was taking.

The police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said he could not comment on Mr. Hiraman’s mental state, but said St. John’s had not been made aware of any “red flags” in Mr. Hiraman’s behavior before the incident.

Mr. Kelly said that Mr. Hiraman had bought the gun, a $170 Wolf rifle that breaks in the middle and is charged with gunpowder, at a gun store in Duchess County in upstate New York. New York City residents are required to produce a gun permit when they buy a gun, the commissioner said, but Mr. Hiraman did not have one. He said police are investigating whether the store, Dick’s Sporting Goods, knew that Mr. Hiraman was a city resident, and whether they sold the gun to him anyway.

Police officials said they would be testing the gun this afternoon to see if it was fully loaded. The gun uses a single ball bullet that is loaded manually. Yesterday, police said Mr. Hiraman had no other ammunition on his person at the time of his arrest.

A warrant for Mr. Hiraman’s computer is currently being sought because he recently sent an e-mail to a local lawyer asking questions about which agencies would be notified if he were to buy a gun, police officials said.

Mr. Kelly praised the university’s response to the incident, including its new emergency text messaging system, which he said, “worked like a charm.”

He also honored the student who helped security guards arrest Mr. Hiraman, Christopher Benson, 21, who is a police cadet. Mr. Benson was sitting on a park bench on campus when he noticed Mr. Hiraman carrying the gun and followed him.

“At one point I was afraid he would turn into the crowd and start shooting,” Mr. Benson said at an afternoon news conference with Mr. Kelly. “I was pretty relieved that it didn’t go off.”


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