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- Comment on 'I was exercising at the park - the next thing I knew snipers were aiming at me' 1 week ago:
A dad who found himself at the centre of a major armed police response while exercising at a park in a weighted vest has spoken of the moment he was ordered to the ground as snipers took aim.
The man, who is in his 40s, was pictured on his knees with his hands on his head amid the drama on Friday (March 20). Speaking exclusively to the Manchester Evening News in the wake of the incident at Mandley Park, he said: “I said to the police ‘it’s better safe than sorry’.”
The incident unfolded following reports of a ‘suspicious male’ at the Higher Broughton park at around 11.52am. The alarm was raised when people spotted the man in a vest, carrying what some feared was a cable or ‘wires’.
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Panic spread, with wild speculation quickly flooding social media. False claims the man was wearing a ‘suicide bomb’, ‘bomb vest’ or ‘pack’ were rife. Dozens of images and video clips appeared online within minutes.
Greater Manchester Police later confirmed it was a ‘false alarm’ and that the man was wearing a ‘weighted gym vest’ and carrying a skipping rope while exercising. There is an outdoor gym at the park.
A man with his hands on his head at Mandley Park View 5 Images The man with his hands on his head at Mandley Park(Image: X) Speaking on the condition of anonymity over fears for his safety, the man told the Manchester Evening News: "I was scared when I heard police shouting. They said to me ‘lie down’. I didn’t think it was for me, but there were no other people around me.
“One said ‘shoot him if he moves’, or something like that. The colleague was saying to the other ‘shoot him’ a few times. I lie down, just do whatever they tell me and I see a helicopter over my head.”
The father, who moved from Albania to the UK 25 years ago, said he was using his skipping rope and vest as he exercised as usual. He said he wears the weighted vest ‘everywhere’ after being urged to get fit by his doctor. Mandley Park is one of his favoured workout spots, he said.
“I wear it everywhere I go,” he added. "I have diabetes type two and a problem with my heart. The doctor told me to work out and exercise because I was overweight.
View 5 Images Armed police took aim at the man(Image: X) “So I train. I go to the gym, I go to the park just to exercise. But yesterday was one of them [days]. I wear that vest everywhere when I exercise. It’s not just me, I see many people using that vest.”
The area is home to one of the country’s biggest Jewish communities. Within moments, images and footage of the man being surrounded by armed officers spread on social media, with scores of false captions.
The man said he kept calm as best he could while cooperating with officers. He added: "Somebody has called the police, they were worried that I had got a vest. I was skipping at this point.
"The police were thinking it was a bomb or something… whatever the person that called them had said. They told me to leave my phone on the floor and lie down. I did whatever they told me to do.
A man seen on the ground View 5 Images The man was told to lie on the ground(Image: X) “They asked me to take the vest off, I took it off and moved to the right side. They put me in handcuffs. They took me to the police station and kept me in a couple of hours, then I was free to go.”
The man at the centre of the storm said he understood why concerns were raised in the heart of Salford’s Jewish community, around a mile from the scene of last October’s attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Crumpsall.
“I said to the police, ‘it’s better safe than sorry’,” he said. "I’m not blaming the police, they were very nice with me. I was being nice with them, we work together. That’s why we pay our taxes so we keep ourselves safe.
“Because it’s a Jewish area, I think people were scared, but I go there all the time. I go to the Jewish shops, I go there for my kids, they have nice food. I walk around here for an hour, an hour-and-a-half, something like that.”
View 5 Images Police walk through Mandley Park after the incident(Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News) GMP confirmed no further action is being taken against the manl. The force said the incident ‘was a false alarm and there is no threat to the wider community’.
The man added: “It is what it is. Sometimes it happens, you know.”
Members of the Jewish community thanked police for their swift response. A spokesperson for the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester said: "Thankfully, this has been clarified as a false alarm and there is no threat to our community.
“This incident is indicative of the levels of anxiety currently being faced by Jewish people across the world. We are once again grateful for the exemplary response by GMP and the professionalism of the Community Security Trust. We are fortunate to be able to rely on these two amazing organisations to keep us safe.”
- 'I was exercising at the park - the next thing I knew snipers were aiming at me'www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk ↗Submitted 1 week ago to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk | 29 comments
- Comment on The "unhackable" Xbox One has been hacked — and Microsoft can’t patch it 1 week ago:
I watched the talk and the demo, the bar is pretty high. But the good news that a relatively simple modchip should be possible
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
YES
- Comment on Windows 12 release date in 2026 possible, with AI features that may force CPU upgrades 3 weeks ago:
To be fair Iot LTSC edition doesn’t have the bloatware consumer editions have, for instance there aren’t those stupid news widget sidebar thing or copilot. Also most people live in the real world, not this unix bubble we have here
- Comment on Windows 12 release date in 2026 possible, with AI features that may force CPU upgrades 3 weeks ago:
I use linux dude, but my mother needs windows for her work
- Comment on Windows 12 release date in 2026 possible, with AI features that may force CPU upgrades 3 weeks ago:
My moms pc is covered for some good time (google mas)
- Comment on Windows 12 release date in 2026 possible, with AI features that may force CPU upgrades 3 weeks ago:
Yes, like Arch but for windows
- Comment on Dynamic pricing could be coming to your local supermarket 3 weeks ago:
Hook it up with BT id you can’t turn off in your phone - bada bing
- Comment on Copilot could soon live inside Windows 11's File Explorer, as Microsoft tests Chat with Copilot in Explorer, not just in a separate app 2 months ago:
Nice another registry tweak I’ll need!
- Comment on Is there anything of any interests for the tech bros in Greenland? 2 months ago:
I read they are hard to extract there just like the one’s trump wanted in Ukraine
- Submitted 3 months ago to [deleted] | 19 comments
- Comment on When a video codec wins an Emmy | The Mozilla Blog 3 months ago:
get a gpu that can encode av1
- Comment on When a video codec wins an Emmy | The Mozilla Blog 3 months ago:
no one wants to pay royalties to mpeg consortium
- Comment on Karl Bushby: Made a bet in 1998 that he could walk from Chile to England. 27 Years later, Still walking. Survived Darién Gap, 57 days in a Russian prison, Traversing the Bering Strait on shifting ice 3 months ago:
Good, some did it so that i don’t have to
- Submitted 3 months ago to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world | 37 comments
- Submitted 3 months ago to [deleted] | 3 comments
- Submitted 3 months ago to [deleted] | 57 comments
- Comment on Another angle of this modern art installation 3 months ago:
happened again
- Comment on Google Revisits JPEG XL in Chromium After Earlier Removal 3 months ago:
webp is great on discord for “gifs” if u need fit a long animation under 10 meg limit. And you can make it with ffmpeg
- Comment on Large-capacity microSD cards are now regularly out of stock in Japan as storage crunch claims another victim — high-capacity HDDs are also vanishing 3 months ago:
Hopefully I’ll be able to snatch a specific Gskill V 64GB kit of 2 3200MT for cheap to max out my mobo 🤣
- Comment on An entire PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory, even after a discount — simple memory kit jumps to $600 due to DRAM shortage, and it's expected to get worse into 2026 3 months ago:
I got 64GB (kit of 2) ddr4 for 150€ In January, now it is almost 400€ or more. I thought of buying another kit of 64 later to max out my mobo to 128GB and now I’m totally kicking myself for not going for 128GB straight away. And last month it got announced they no longer will make ddr4 so I’m out of luck anyway now even if prices stabilize.
As for why I need that much ram, I’m a tab hoarder and like to run VMs
- Comment on Large-capacity microSD cards are now regularly out of stock in Japan as storage crunch claims another victim — high-capacity HDDs are also vanishing 3 months ago:
I had a peek about ram, no much profit to be made yet
- Comment on Large-capacity microSD cards are now regularly out of stock in Japan as storage crunch claims another victim — high-capacity HDDs are also vanishing 3 months ago:
Don’t know about storage, but memory chip makers have already said they won’t boost production because they know this is ai bubble demand
- Submitted 4 months ago to [deleted] | 1 comment
- Comment on Mozilla announces an AI ‘window’ for Firefox 4 months ago:
I got assimilated, I actually use the AI sidebar very often but only because the classical search sucks so bad now… of course i encounter hallucinations often and still don’t understand how is this a trillion dollar industry
- Comment on I am curious about hosting my own lemmy/mastodon server 4 months ago:
more control
- Comment on I am curious about hosting my own lemmy/mastodon server 4 months ago:
The default docker compose file from the tutorial on Lemmy’s website tries to set up the whole thing with Postgresql 18 image but I got some error with that, i fixed it by using Postgresql 16 image. I forgot what the error message was, but there were people on GitHub complaining about the same errors but one of the devs kept closing them as “support” issue and told everyone to solve it on forums or matrix but people where clueless the as well when i googled around.
- Comment on I am curious about hosting my own lemmy/mastodon server 4 months ago:
erm, to interact with the fediverse? and to have a place on my website for people to see what I’m up to?
- Comment on I am curious about hosting my own lemmy/mastodon server 4 months ago:
I run Mastodon in single user mode (only myself) and lemmy with registrations disabled. Also don’t use image proxy-ing with pictrs on lemmy if u concerned about illegal images
