LAURA ITALIANO
Courtesy of The New York Post
In riveting court testimony yesterday, a New York City firefighter described pulling his rescue knife on a free-lance photographer caught sneaking around Ground Zero in allegedly stolen gear.
It was 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, just three hours after the towers had collapsed.
Stephen Ferry, 41, who says he's a former White House correspondent, was discovered wearing a red Rescue Co. 3 hard hat, a FDNY-issued jumpsuit and work boots described in a criminal complaint as those of a firefighter dead in the collapse.
The man with the knife, firefighter Doug Hantusch, was from Rescue Co. 3 as well.
At a pretrial hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday, Hantusch described how, as he happened on Ferry, he was desperate to find any of the eight missing members of his company.
"Stan!" Hantusch testified to shouting, mistaking the alleged intruder for a colleague. Ferry kept going, Hantusch remembered, so he gave chase to question the familiarly dressed stranger.
"I said, ‘Who are you?' " Hantusch testified. "He said, ‘Um, I'm a firefighter.' "
Hantusch remembered snarling back, "Listen. You have Rescue 3 gear on, and I'm from Rescue 3, and I don't know you."
When Hantusch demanded Ferry give the gear back, Ferry wouldn't. And that's when Hantusch, enraged, pulled his knife.
"I told him, ‘Take the gear off, or I'll cut it off you.' "
No blood was shed. A fire marshal happened to be nearby, and assisted in arresting Ferry.
"It was a tough day, was it not, Sept. 11?" Hantusch was asked by defense lawyer Jack Litman.
"I think that was obvious," Hantusch answered.
Police arrested Ferry again two days later, when he returned to the scene.
He is charged with criminal impersonation, petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property, but insists a firefighter gave him the gear.
