“He loved his Civics, he loved going fast”, said Ryan McCann, a frequent customer at First American Fried Chicken, the restaurant that Rahami’s father, Mohammed Rahami, has run since 2002.
Advertisement
Authorities are still trying to unravel the mystery that is the bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami as investigators are taking a closer look at his actions and possible motivations as a New Jersey congressman revealed Rahami contacted his office previously to get his wife a visa.
When I am president, terrorists like today’s suspect in the NY and New Jersey bombings, Ahmad Khan Rahami, and [the] knife-wielding ISIS sympathizer in Minnesota, Dahir Adan, will be stopped. At 12:30 p.m. EDT, the man was identified by a fingerprint left on the pressure cooker explosive device discovered by police in NY.
A motive behind the attacks is still being investigated, and the Chelsea bombing may have been an act of terrorism with a foreign connection, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.
“I would ask that the press try to refrain from getting out ahead of the investigation”, Mr. Obama said.
As the East Coast was rattled by the bombings, a man who authorities say referred to Allah wounded nine people in a stabbing rampage at a Minnesota mall Saturday before being shot to death by an off-duty police officer.
In the age of social media, the NYPD quickly turned to Facebook and identified pictures of Rahami’s family and of him.
Federal authorities believe that the explosion in Chelsea, where another explosive device was found nearby, was linked to as many as six explosive devices found just outside NY in Elizabeth.
Neighbors were stunned when they learned Rahami was a suspected terrorist.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man accused of planting several bombs in NY and New Jersey, has been charged with attempted murder of law enforcement officials. A second policeman got a hand wound before the suspect was overpowered.
He has traveled to Afghanistan multiple times in the past. Two years later, in April 2013, he went to Pakistan and remained there until March 2014, visiting Afghanistan before returning to the United States.
Investigators have discovered a website where Rahami posted messages with distinctly jihadist overtones.
James McDermott is one of the neighbors named in the lawsuit, he told Inside Edition: “They were incidents of people hanging around a corner”.
It contained up to five devices, Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage said.
Officials said at least one of his relatives was in the vehicle, which appeared to be going towards JFK airport in NY after coming from New Jersey.
Jack Mazza, co-manager of nearby V.C.M.R. Truck Services, said the bar owner came over exclaiming about the sleeping man, and Mazza walked over to see a man curled up with a sweatshirt hood pulled over his head in the rain. According to CNN, these attacks coincided with the United Nation General Assembly meeting in New York this week. The second device, described by the same official as a pressure cooker with wires and a cellphone attached to it, was removed early Sunday by a bomb squad robot and New York City police blew it up in a controlled explosion Sunday evening, authorities said.
Heightened security across the city is common during the UNGA.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump seized on the arrest to attack his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and suggested it showed some flaw in the “system” – though whether he meant the immigration or general law enforcement was not clear.
Advertisement
“He was a normal, regular kid, he’d joke a lot, watch me and my brothers rap”, Jones said.
