De Blasio Hit Park Slope Gym During Staten Island Standoff

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio made a high-profile visit on Friday afternoon to the bedside of Lt. James Hayes, the 53-year-old firefighter seriously wounded Friday morning in a standoff with a Staten Island gang leader.

The standoff ended around 1 p.m. when the NYPD fatally shot the suspect, 38-year-old Garland Tyree.

But well before it ended — and well after Lt. Hayes was shot — various witnesses and reporters say NYC’s mayor thought it appropriate to hit his favorite gym in Park Slope, the Prospect Park YMCA, for an extended workout.

NY1 reporter Grace Rauh, who was waiting for him to exit, said around 11 a.m. that the workout was two hours in.

De Blasio’s press secretary, Karen Hinton, tweeted that the workout lasted 80 minutes.

In a statement sent to Patch, Hinton says:

Mayor de Blasio was on calls with both Fire Commissioner Nigro and Police Commissioner Bratton about the situation on Staten Island throughout the morning, starting at 7 a.m., and he continued receiving multiple updates until he departed for Staten Island. This includes leaving the gym to make and take a series of calls from approximately 10:40 a.m. to 11:15 a.m., when he departed for Staten Island. The mayor has met with the wounded firefighter and his fellow firefighters at the hospital, and will soon update the media on both the situation on the ground in Staten Island and the wounded firefighter’s condition.

Even though the mayor now lives in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, he still makes frequent trips down to Park Slope to hit the Y. And this isn’t the first time he’s been spotted on the elliptical during a pressing municipal event.

Note: This story previously framed the mayor’s morning workout as a form of “ditching” an ”event.” He did not in fact ditch any scheduled event. He merely hit the gym during an ongoing emergency situation.