Cops: Man with gun says he was at sea

He walked out of the waves and onto Jones Beach Tuesday morning wearing a garbage bag and a wet suit. He told a Wantagh resident out for a morning stroll of being three days adrift on a raft.

By Tuesday night, the man, identified by state park police as Pablo Perez, 47, of Flushing, was being evaluated at Nassau University Medical Center and facing weapons charges for carrying a loaded .25-caliber handgun, police said.

"It's a strange situation," said park police Det. Sgt. Thomas Duignan Tuesday.

Duignan said officers confiscated the semiautomatic handgun they said Perez had tucked away in a plastic bag under his wet suit and park police found an inflatable raft washed up on shore not far from the West Bath House. Police did not say whether the raft belonged to Perez.

Perez was to be held for observation overnight under police guard at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow and will eventually face the weapons charges, Duignan said.

Investigators spent much of Tuesday trying to piece together Perez's story, but were no closer to finding answers than they were when they first got an early morning 911 call at about 6:15 a.m. Tuesday, Duignan said.

Wantagh resident Gary Smith said he was taking his morning stroll on the boardwalk at Jones Beach State Park when he met a large, shivering man with a black garbage bag covering his wetsuit.

"I asked him, 'Where did you come from?' " Smith said. "He said, 'I come from the ocean, from a raft.' "

Smith, who said he is in his 60s and semiretired from the entertainment business, described Perez as being about 6-foot-3 and about 300 pounds. He said he found Perez "very nonthreatening," but said Perez told him he was carrying a handgun.

"He wanted to show me the gun," Smith said. "I was like, 'Please, don't do that.' "

Smith said he called 911 and told Perez to keep the gun in place until police arrived, but advised him to tell police immediately on their arrival that he had the weapon.

"That's exactly what he did," Smith said. "He was a mild-mannered person. I was very apprehensive -- you know, because of his story -- but I wasn't threatened. It's just his story didn't make sense. I mean, he's telling me: 'I came from a raft.' I was thinking, 'What's the chance of that?' "

Smith said that Perez told him his raft had been tied to the back of a sailboat in a marina somewhere in the waters off New York City, but had become detached and that it had drifted out to sea.

He said Smith told him he had been fishing. Duignan said police found no fishing equipment in the raft.

Police confirmed it was Smith who called 911 to report the incident and said Smith encountered Perez on the boardwalk near the central mall by the water tower.

Police said they have contacted the U.S. Coast Guard about boaters reported missing, but have found no connection.

"We asked NYPD to go to the house, the address on his photo ID, but there was nobody home," Duignan said.