Wikipedia Volunteers Avert Tragedy by Taking Down Gunman at Conference

The armed man came striding up the aisle at a conference for Wikipedia editors Friday morning in Manhattan, several witnesses said.

The man, draped in a multicolored flag, walked onto the stage and stood next to Maryana Iskander, the chief of the nonprofit group that runs Wikipedia, interrupting her speech. He announced that he was going to kill himself. He held a gun near his head and pointed it toward the ceiling.

The audience of well over a hundred people panicked.

“People started yelling, ‘Get down, get down!’ and people started ducking behind their chairs,” said Bill Adair, a journalism professor who was there and is writing a book on Wikipedia.