Armed Man Scares Jackson Rally but Just Sought Photo

Secret Service agents hustled a shaken Jesse Jackson from the stage at a mass rally in the Bronx on Tuesday night after a man wearing a gun in his belt approached him, but a spokesman said later that the man was an off-duty employee of the state Department of Corrections who only wanted to take a picture.

The man, whose name was not released, was wrestled to the ground by other agents and detained but was released almost immediately after the Secret Service determined that he did not pose a threat, said special agent William Corbett, a spokesman for the agency.

“Rather than be sorry, they played it safe,” said Delmarie Cobb, Jackson’s press secretary.

Jackson, standing on stairs behind the stage as the man was led away, was visibly shaken. The crowd of 2,000 seemed momentarily to panic. But the tension eased as Wendell Foster, a New York City councilman, took the microphone to lead the crowd in shouts of “Jesse, Jesse,” and to declare: “That’s why we have the Secret Service here.”

Jackson, who resumed his speech but wrapped it up quickly, said as he departed that he did not know what had happened but was all right. He rode with reporters on the press bus back to Manhattan but sat quietly in the back, and his campaign said he would have no further comment on the incident.