Today show suicide, A tortured soul who slashed his wrists in front of a horrified crowd watching the “Today” show outside Rockefeller Center Thursday said he committed this “desperate act” to get back at the IRS and others who robbed him.
“I had to do something desperate to fight the corruption, fight the IRS,” Pak Chong Mar told a Daily News reporter as he lay on a hospital gurney at Bellevue Hospital. “They are so powerful.”
Bandages on his right hand and left wrist, blood spattered on his dark jeans, the Queens man gave a rambling statement about how he was done wrong just a couple of hours after the midtown mayhem. While Pak spoke, his wife and grown daughter sat silently nearby.
“I need people to help me fight for justice,” Pak said. “If I don’t do something drastic, sooner or later these guys are going to kill me anyway. I couldn’t even pay rent this month.”
Pak, 76, said he emigrated from China to New York in 1948 and made a million dollars buying stocks with money made from running a grocery store and working as a waiter. He claimed TD Ameritrade and Scottrade helped the IRS plunder his funds and he had proof back at his apartment.
I should be living well,” he said. “I had over a million dollars before. They’re making my life miserable.”
Pak’s daughter, who declined to give her name, shook her head sadly.
“It’s sad,” she said. “We’re just trying to figure things out.” Pak pleaded with the reporter for help and promised him a $50,000 cut if he got his money back. But when asked about the three fingers missing from his left hand, Pak abruptly said, “That’s a long story.”
According to police, back in August 1995, Pak used used a meat cleaver to methodically chop off the pinky, ring finger and middle finger of his left hand — then he tossed each digit into the crowd gathered for the Hong Kong Dragon Board Festival in Flushing, Queens.
Pak was carrying letters protesting his eviction from his Brooklyn apartment at the time.
When Pak arrived at NBC headquarters shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday, he was wearing a grubby gray T-shirt and a white baseball cap — and carrying another sheaf of documents.
“The IRS ruined my life!” he hollered, witnesses said. “I’m not a freeloader!”
Pak also yelled something about “peppermint tea” and then thrust the papers at the tourists inside the barricaded area where they had been watching Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker perform in their glass-walled studio.
When nobody would give Pak the time of day, he threw the papers up in apparent frustration and pulled out a pocket knife.
“I’m going to cut myself,” Pak declared. As Pak was sawing one wrist, somebody knocked the knife out of his hands, witnesses said. So Pak grabbed another knife and began cutting his other wrist.
But Joseph Lasala, a former city cop who now works as Lauer’s “security guy,” tackled him, sources said.
“He took him down like a sack of potatoes,” a Lasala pal told The News.
Lasala was helped by Robert Kane, another former cop turned private guard, sources said.
Pak was knocked off his feet — and into a puddle of his own blood, witnesses said. It happened really fast — and then he was down,” said 21-year-old Jossie Edwards, a tourist from Easley, S.C.
Pak is unlikely to be charged with a crime because he didn’t hurt anyone but himself, sources said.
Also, Pak’s gory stunt was not televised and the on-air “Today” crew wasn’t made aware of the drama developing outside their window until after it was over.
“We have strict security protocols in place to protect visitors to the ‘Today’ show and those procedures were followed and effective,” it read. “We are very grateful for the actions of our security team and the NYPD that no others visiting the show were harmed in the incident.”
At Pak’s apartment in Corona, neighbors said he lived quietly with his wife.
“I just see him come and go,” said Earl Pincus, 84. “They’re quiet people . . . Maybe he just snapped.”
Pak sued New York Downtown Hospital, then called Beekman Downtown Hospital, for “podiatric malpractice” in 1998. The result of that suit was not known.
While Pak is not likely to face prosecution, a clueless Kentucky teenager was busted for tweeting threats.
No one is waving hello in the today show crowd,” 17-year-old Andrew Szurgot wrote, in a comment apparently unrelated to Pak’s deed. “They all die after the show.”
Those words got the attention of NBC security officials trolling social media after the Pak incident and they alerted cops.
Szurgot, who was in the city on a school trip chaperoned by his mother, wasn’t hard to find. His photo was on his Twitter handle.
The teenager is to be charged with falsely reporting an incident.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Today show suicide
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