It was near 8 p.m. Wednesday when Lamparello, a 37-year-old adjunct philosophy lecturer, entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan toting two gallons of gasoline, lighter fluid and lighters, the police said.
Stopped by ushers, he explained he was trying to take a shortcut through the iconic sanctuary to reach his vehicle, which had run out of gas, police said.
Lamparello’s minivan, though, was not out of fuel, police said, and a stroll through St. Patrick’s was hardly a shortcut. Spooked, church security officers flagged police officers as Lamparello turned to leave, sloshing gasoline on the floor.
Lamparello, who lives in New Jersey, was taken into custody Wednesday night for questioning, police said, but has not been charged with any crime. He has had prior run-ins with law enforcement and had previously been arrested in New Jersey for trespassing, the Fire Department said.
His arrest came just before Easter and two days after a devastating fire tore through the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
“His basic story was that he was cutting through the cathedral to get to Madison Avenue, that his car had run out of gas,” said John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. “We took a look at the vehicle. It was not out of gas, and at that point he was taken into custody.”
Lamparello is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the City University of New York. He was a 2004 graduate of Boston College and was listed as teaching courses at Brooklyn College this spring. A philosophy academic, he had written and published his first book, “Reason and Counterpoint,” in 2016.
Lamparello’s history with the church is murky, but his work suggests at least a baseline interest in questions of religion and higher powers. In 2016, his author biography on Amazon.com indicated he was working on a book-length project about wrestling with the existence of God.
At least one of the courses he has taught, Introduction to the Problems of Philosophy, touched on the idea of religion. The course included “such topics as the nature and scope of knowledge, meaning and verification, the existence of God, determinism and free will, the mind-body problem, and the nature of moral judgments,” according to an online course description for Brooklyn College.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.