New York: Hours after a terror attack, tens of thousands of New Yorkers gathered in Manhattan for a Halloween parade, and even those dressed as chickens said they were not afraid.
“The police took care of the attack,” said Marc Cruz, a 28-year-old in a chicken costume. He said he felt “pretty safe.”
Brandon McCall, 29, was wearing a luxuriant feather jacket paired with a handmade chicken mask and bright yellow tights. Asked if he had considered not coming to the parade because of the attack that afternoon he said, “Oh no, not at all!”
“So many people were telling me not to come. I said, ‘You have to live your life.’” said Alexandra Colon, 37, who came to the parade as Kate Winslet in Titanic, with a cardboard Leonardo DiCaprio hovering over her shoulder.
Sixteen years ago, Colon had watched the World Trade Center fall from her home across the river in Jersey City. She had not even considered skipping this year’s Village Halloween parade, which she has been attending since she was 17.
“I’m not going to let terrorists stop my life ... they’re not going to win,” said Alex Tutino, 20, who was wearing a tangle of neon balloons with paper fish taped to them. He was dressed, he said, as “Finding Nemo.”
Just two hours after the arrest of the attacker, New Yorkers in elaborate costumes, including glowing lights and stilts, were streaming through metal barricades at the starting point of the annual Village Halloween Parade, which officials had said would continue despite the attack.
‘We have to continue living’
“To be honest with you, there’s a tragedy every day somewhere in the world, and we have to continue living,” says Windy Vargas, who had come to the parade with her kids, aged eight, 13 and 16, wanting to give them something “positive” in a world full of negativity.
William Cuestas, 43, a truck driver from Queens, had also brought his three children to watch the parade, confident that the police had the incident under control. “We feel safe in the city,” he said.
The costumed marchers, some hauling their own boom boxes, strolled and danced north along Sixth Avenue, through the West Village, with the rebuilt Freedom Tower of the World Trade Center rising behind them, and the Empire State Building visible in the distance ahead.
Marion Meranger-Galtier, visiting New York from Paris with her family and wearing a dinosaur costume, said the news of the attack that afternoon had made them “even more determined” to come out to watch the Halloween parade. After the attacks in Paris two years ago that left 130 dead at a concert hall and in cafes across the city, Parisians had decided the best answer to terror was more concerts, more events, more wine on outdoor terraces.
Tuesday’s attack claimed the lives of five Argentinian friends and a Belgian woman touring the city with her family, officials said.
In a statement, Jeanne Fleming, the artistic and producing director of the Village Halloween Parade, estimated the number of participants as in the “tens of thousands.” The New York Police Department did not provide estimates for the number of participants or the number of officers who lined the streets during the event.
