by Paul Bass | Feb 7, 2017 3:42 pm

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Posted to: Legal Writes

A chanting man with prayer beads panicked dozens of people into fleeing the Elm Street state courthouse Tuesday afternoon.

The incident occurred in Courtroom A around 12:20 p.m.

Superior Judge Melanie Cradle was hearing a parade of case updates when a man walked into the courtroom and stared “winding his way” to the side of the spectators’ section, where about 60 people were seated, according to Assistant State’s Attorney Mike Denison.

“He began chanting,” said Denison, who had been reviewing notes when the man entered. “He was getting louder and louder and louder. People in the gallery were drawing back. He looked as if he was angry.”

Denison didn’t see any weapon on the man. The man was fingering prayer beads, he said. The man appeared to be chanting in a mixture of gibberish and English, referring at times to “a date in 1983.”

Denison didn’t see any weapon on the man. But someone else in the courtroom called out: “I think he’s got a weapon.”

Within “four seconds,” Denison said, all the spectators rushed out of the courtroom.

Carol Consiglio, the administrative assistant in the courtroom from the clerk’s office, hadn’t noticed the man chanting. But she did see everyone suddenly run out. “I was in shock at first” and stayed put, she said. Then she joined the rush.

A man waiting in the lobby watched the stampede head out the door of the courthouse. “A horde of people were sprinting, yelling. They were falling down; some people got trampled,” said the man, who asked not to be identified. He heard one person cry that “some Ay-rab stood and started praying” in the court. The man joined the crowd outside, where, he said, he saw at least two of the trampled people carried into ambulances.

Back in the courtroom, the judge ordered the chanting man to leave, said Denison, who remained there until the incident ended. The man refused the judge’s order.

Two marshals tried to get him to leave. The judge opened a drawer and activated a panic button, leading a half-dozen more marshals to arrive, Denison said.

One marshal pepper-sprayed the chanting man, according to Denison. He said the man (who he said did not appear to be of Middle Eastern descent) kept on fighting with all the marshals, latching his arm onto a railing dividing the first two rows of spectator seats from the rest of the gallery. “He was putting up a good fight.”

Denison estimated it took about five minutes for the marshals to subdue the man and handcuff him.

Approached afterward, Judge Cradle declined to discuss what happened. “I’m fine, and everyone’s fine,” she said.

State police spokesperson Trooper Kelly Grant reported that “minor injuries” occurred in the incident, but did not provide more details. She said the chanting man, whom she did not identify, “is being held as the investigation continues. No weapons or bombs were located.”

In his 11 years as a prosecutor, Denison, said, he has seen other people act out in the courtroom. Never before, he said, had he seen an entire courtroom emptied in seconds.