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Teacher arrested after US Open interrupted by a mysterious drone crashing into the spectator seats

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A teacher has been arrested for allegedly crashing a drone into an empty section of seats at the US Open tennis tournament.

Police said 26-year-old Daniel Verley faces charges of reckless endangerment and operating a drone in a New York City public park outside a prescribed area.

The black device buzzed diagonally across the Louis Armstrong Stadium near the end of a second-round match that 26th-seeded Flavia Pennetta of Italy won 6-1, 6-4 over Monica Niculescu of Romania.

Pennetta said she heard the drone fly by and was not sure what it was, though her initial reaction, she said afterwards, was that it might have been a bomb.

“A little bit scary, I have to say,” Pennetta said.

“With everything going on in the world … I thought, OK, it’s over. That’s how things happen.”

She said neither the umpire nor tournament officials told her that it was a drone.

It broke into pieces upon landing, and the match was only briefly interrupted between points while police and fire department personnel went to look at it.

Pennetta said: “The chair umpire just wanted to wait for an OK from the police to be able to continue, even if, truthfully, I don’t think even they knew what it was.”

Police, U.S. Open

She said her coach and physical therapist were sitting in the opposite end of the stadium from where the drone crashed and they told her later they were afraid, too.

“All of these (security measures), and then it comes in from above,” Pennetta said.

“If there had been spectators, it would have hit them and done a lot of damage,” Pennetta said.

The incident happened a little before 8.30pm local time in the stadium, which has a seating capacity of about 10,000.

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