Security personnel temporarily shut down a Detroit concert by Green Day Wednesday night after someone flew a drone into Comerica Park.

Detroit Police say they arrested the pilot outside the venue minutes later.

The incident happened about 15 minutes into the concert while the punk rock giants were performing their song “Longview,” according to Paul Coleman, a Windsorite who was in the audience about 20 rows from the stage.

Video footage of the concert shot by Coleman shows a crew member in a black shirt physically directing the band’s bass player from the stage.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong then stops singing, looks stage left and runs off stage in the middle of the song.

‘We weren’t sure if it was part of the show’

“It was very strange,” Coleman said.

“We weren’t sure if it was part of the show … So everybody was looking around at each other, like, ‘What’s going on?'”

Video shows the crowd initially continuing to sing the song after the band left the stage, then breaking into muted applause.

About five minutes later, the large video screens in the stadium displayed the message “Show pause.  Please standby for details,” Coleman said.

He scanned the crowd fearing there might be a shooting, he added, particularly since he’d spotted law enforcement officials in the venue earlier in the evening.

Green Day are known for their political lyrics and changed the words to their song “American Idiot” to take aim at Donald Trump’s politics, he said.

“So when they got rushed off stage, that was the first thing that came to my mind that … they could have been a potential target.”

But the band returned to the stage approximately 10 minutes later, Coleman said, and resumed the performance, making only a cryptic mention of the fact that a lot had happened that night and they would have something to talk about for a very long time.

Members later apologized in a post on X for the delay in the show.

Lack of explanation leaves audience member uneasy

“Stadium security had us clear the stage while they dealt with a potential safety issue,” they explained.

“DPD quickly resolved the situation, and we were able to continue. Thanks for understanding.”

But nobody told the crowd what was going on, Coleman said, and the lack of explanation left him feeling uneasy for 30 minutes or so after the concert resumed.

“Every once in a while, they would have really loud fireworks go off,” he said.

“And I don’t know about everybody else, but I jumped every time … because of what happened. You know?”

There does not appear to have been any threat to audience members, said Cpl. Dan Donakowski, a media relations and public information officer with the Detroit Police Department.

But the stadium is a no-fly zone, he said, so anyone flying a drone over it is committing an offence.

Police are still investigating and had not charged the pilot as of Thursday morning, he added.

Interruption aside, Coleman said the concert was amazing, and he particularly praised the visual team that captured the show on the big screens in the stadium.

“It was really, really well done,” he said.

“They must have had 20 cameras. … They just had so many different angles. They were flashing between them. It was excellent.”