Sources told the publication that on Saturday-when a bomb detonated in Chelsea, Manhattan, injured 29 people-well-dressed thieves happened on a suitcase around the corner, on West 27th Street.
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Citing the FBI, New Jersey State Police said Monday that the bombings in Chelsea and the New Jersey shore town Seaside Park were connected. “We do not, and never will, give in to fear”.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said: “There are certain commonalities on the way the bombs are constructed” in reference to those found in New Jersey and those in New York City.
A bar owner in Linden, NJ. called police after he spotted bombing suspect Ahmad Rahami sleeping in the doorway of his establishment early Monday morning.
In the hours leading up to the arrest, residences associated with Rahami in Perth Amboy and Elizabeth, N.J. were searched by members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in NY and Newark, N.J.
“We all have a role to play as citizens to make sure we don’t succumb to that fear”. Authorities said he underwent surgery for a gunshot wound to the leg.
The arrest came just hours after police issued a bulletin and photo of Rahami, a naturalized US citizen from Afghanistan with an address in Elizabeth, New Jersey. They are tough, they are resilient, they go about their business every single day.
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents swarmed an apartment this morning above a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth that Rahami’s family owns and where the suspect is said to work.
Ryan McCann, of Elizabeth, said that he often ate at the restaurant and recently began seeing Rahami working there more.
She wouldn’t provide further details, but a government official and a law enforcement official who were briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press that five people in the vehicle were being questioned at an FBI building in Manhattan. As one anonymous law enforcement official put it, “Who in this world finds a pressure cooker with a phone and just takes the bag?”
“You could have had a common mastermind in the construction of the bombs”, Cuomo said.
“I have no indication that there’s a cell operating in the area”, FBI Assistant Director William Sweeney said at the news conference.
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An earlier incident in the Jersey Shore town of Seaside Park, in which a bomb exploded in a trash can along the route of a Marine Corps charity run, caused no injuries. No one was hurt.
