A 33-year-old man was arrested in New York City on Monday after he jumped into a reflecting pool at the 9/11 Memorial, the New York Post reported. The incident happened around 1:30 p.m. when a Port Authority cop spotted the man leaping into one of the two-tiered reflecting pools at the memorial.

In a video of the incident that has gone viral, the man was seen lying in the 18-inch deep water in the pool’s central basin after walking slowly towards it. He then slowly moved closer to the center and slid head-first into the pool. The man injured his leg and back in the incident and was taken to the hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

Here’s the video:

An Inadequate Jumped into the 9/11 Memorial Pool in #NewYork

A not entirely balanced 33-year-old #Manhattan resident decided to cool off and swim in the pool, which was built on the site of the #WorldTradeCenter towers destroyed in 2001.

Follow Me For More Update pic.twitter.com/P8JdpTuPCC

— __kaput__ (@__kaput__) October 11, 2023

The water was turned off immediately after the incident, and chains were erected around the pool to deter anyone else from jumping in.

“We saw the firefighters and emergency personnel come down the escalator as we were into the memorial. They said everything’s fine, but they were coming in and going to a, like, back room, and we figured that down there was where they could access,” tourist Lisa Bellow told CBS News. 

The man identified as Jeffrey Hernandez was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and trespassing after the terrifying jump, a New York Police Department (NYPD) spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Port Authority described him as an “apparently emotionally disturbed person,” as per NBC News. He will also be getting a mental evaluation and criminal charges might include trespassing. The motivation behind the man’s actions is still unknown at this time.

Notably, the pool is one of two at the memorial, both in the footprints of the Twin Towers that fell during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum website, each pool descends 30 feet into a basin and drops 20 more feet into a “central void.” 

The Memorial was completed and opened on September 11, 2011, ten years after the attacks that destroyed the original towers. 

Monday marks the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that shook the United States. The terror attack in 2001 on one of the then-iconic sites in New York, the World Trade Center, also had a huge impact globally. The September 11 attacks were the deadliest attacks on US soil since the Pearl Harbour bombing in 1941 that launched the US into World War II.

On September 11, 2001, planes crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. The terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured countless others. 

Here’s what happened:

• On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four US passenger airplanes.
• After taking control of the aircrafts, terrorists crashed two of them into the upper floors of the Twin Towers (the North and South Towers) of the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan between 8 and 9 a.m. Within two hours, both the 110-storey towers collapsed.
• The debris of the Twin Towers led to the collapse of all other buildings in the World Trade Center complex, including the 47-story 7 World Trade Center tower.
• The third plane crashed into the headquarters of the US Department of Defense – Pentagon in Virginia.
• The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to fight back against the hijackers.
• The attacks killed 2,977 people from 93 nations: 2,753 people were killed in New York; 184 people were killed at the Pentagon; and 40 people were killed on Flight 93. 

The destruction of the World Trade Center affected the economy of Manhattan and had a significant effect on global markets. While the cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed in May 2002, the Pentagon building was repaired within a year. The construction of One World Trade Center began at the World Trade Center site in 2006 and it opened to the public in 2014. Several memorials have been built in memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks.