Man saluting Trump and Hitler during play prompts audience to flee

According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, during intermission at a showing of "Fiddler on the Roof" (which is about a Jewish family being persecuted in Russia), a man in the balcony stood up and shouted "Heil Hitler! Heil Trump!" and started throwing nazi salutes, causing a timult and prompting some audience members nearby the man to panic, fearing the outburst signaled the beginning of a mass shooting:

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Immediately after that, “People started running,” Scherr said. “I’ll be honest, I was waiting to hear a gunshot. I thought, ‘Here we go.’” Samit Verma was seated in the balcony when he heard shouting and saw a man holding his hand straight up in a Nazi salute, he said in an email Thursday. Ushers rushed over to the man while audience members quickly made their way out of the theater and into the hall, Verma said. “The people around me appeared to be quite shaken by the incident,” Verma said in the email. “There were some people in tears.” Police were called and security escorted the man out a few minutes later, a police spokeswoman said, and the show continued. Witnesses told the Baltimore Sun that the audience applauded as the man was removed. But Scherr, 49, said it was hard to focus on the play after that. “My heart was just racing. I didn’t even really pay attention to the second act.” The man was not arrested, a police spokeswoman said. Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, said the incident was concerning to the Jewish community, and he understood why theatergoers worried the outburst could have signaled the start of a more violent episode. “Things like that anywhere, much less crowded theaters, is a really potentially dangerous thing, you know. We’re all very sensitive and concerned in the wake of the recent shootings,” Libit said. “Shouting that seems to be the equivalent of shouting ‘fire’ in a theater, or shouting ‘bomb.’” “I’m certainly grateful that it wasn’t the start of some broader, more violent incident,” Libit added. “Whatever he was intending to say was hateful and hurtful and potentially very dangerous... it sounds like some of the people were kind of moving quickly to get out of the way.”

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2RXScOS