Brooklyn Teacher Crashes Drone Into U.S. Open Stands During Match: Police

A young Brooklyn teacher crashed his remote-controlled drone into an empty seat at Louis Armstrong Stadium in Queens during a U.S. Open match on Thursday night, according to the NYPD.

NYC Department of Education employee Daniel Verley, 26, was arrested at 1 a.m. the next morning and charged with “reckless operation of a drone” and “operating a drone in an NYC public park outside of a prescribed area for doing so,” police said.

The small personal drone flew eastward through the stadium hit a southwest corner of the stands around 8:27 p.m., interrupting a match between Flavia Pennetta and Monica Niculescu, the U.S. Tennis Association said in a statement.

Although the match was briefly put on hold while the NYPD investigated the flying object, “no spectators were in the immediate area of the crash and there were no injuries,” the association said.

Verley reportedly teaches science at the Academy of Innovative Technology in Brooklyn. Reached by phone on Friday, a school representative who did not identify herself said: “We have no comment on that right now.”

Pennetta, one of the tennis players whose match was interrupted by the drone, told the New York Post that the experience was “a little bit scary.”

“With everything going on in the world… I thought, ‘OK, it’s over,’” Pennetta said.

“All of these [security measures], and then it comes in from above,” she added.