Update: Lockdown Lifted At Coast Guard Station, Report Says

A retired police officer saw people at Midland Beach in Staten Island holding what appeared to be assault rifles, but police now believe they were paintball guns, according to MyFoxNY.

But that initial report from the retired officer caused authorities to issue a lockdown at Coast Guard Sector New York, at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, the television station said.

The television station initially said the Sandy Hook Coast Guard Station was also on lockdown, but now reports that the Sandy Hook station was put on high alert.

Both Fort Wadsworth and Sandy Hook are part of the National Park Service’s Gateway National Recreation Area.

A spokesman for the NYPD said the retired officer took photos of the people at Midland Beach and sent them to the the department’s Intelligence Bureau Operations Unit, Park Slope Patch reports.

In the photos, the man and woman appeared to be holding semi-automatic rifles, but after a forensic examination of the photos by experts, their preliminary opinion is that the weapons “strongly resemble replicas of firearms used in “paintball” games,’’ according to a police statement given to Park Slope Patch.

NYPD and FBI investigators interviewed the registered owner of one of the vehicles, and he told them he planned to go paintball shooting with friends on Friday, that statement said.