On Monday morning, the New York Police Department have named 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, as a suspect in the bombing.
Advertisement
Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said on Sunday that the attack did not appear to have a link to global terrorism, said new evidence might change that thinking. An unexploded pressure-cooker bomb was found blocks away.
Officials said they have no other suspects at large but cautioned they are still investigating. Hours earlier, about 10:15 a.m., a bomb had exploded at New Jersey’s Seaside Park; no injures were reported. No one was injured in the New Jersey bombing and police officers checked garbage cans in the surrounding areas but found nothing.
“Tonight, New York City experienced a very bad incident”, de Blasio told reporters near the scene in Chelsea.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the bombing an “intentional” act but declined to call it terrorism before police had any tangible notion of motive. That much we do know. The activity came hours after one of five devices found at the nearby Elizabeth train station exploded while a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters that while there was no apparent link between the Chelsea explosion and the one in New Jersey or global terrorism, the blast was terrorism “generically” because it was meant to instill fear.
William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in NY, said on Monday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had gotten a report of a domestic incident involving Rahami some time ago, but the allegations had been recanted, and “there’s nothing to indicate that now he was on our radar”.
“Diminishing the threat the Obama administration has allowed to materialise on its watch puts us all at risk and is another reminder that we need new leadership in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism”, Trump’s spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement. “My operating premise is anytime, anywhere, seven days a week you could have an incident like this”.
Crime scene investigators work at the scene of Saturday’s explosion in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, in New York, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016.
Police officers and firefighters respond to an explosion on Saturday at 23rd Street and 7th Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
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.
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.
The FBI is evaluating a claim of responsibility for the New York City bombing on the social blogging service Tumblr.
Both bombs in New York were filled with shrapnel and made with pressure cookers, flip phones, Christmas lights and explosive compound, The New York Times reported late Sunday, citing law enforcement officials.
He said all of the injured, including one case considered serious, have been released from the hospital.
Late Sunday night, five explosive devices were discovered in a trash can at an Elizabeth train station.
Advertisement
A second device was discovered blocks away, removed by a bomb squad robot and is being examined at a police facility.
