New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) called a bombing in the city that left 29 injured on Saturday night an “act of terror”, while officials said they were not searching for another suspect in a Monday afternoon press conference.
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The development came as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and NYPD took several people into custody during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Sunday night in connection to Saturday’s explosion in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.
A federal law enforcement official said a pipe bomb that exploded in New Jersey and two pressure cookers found in NY all contained flip-style cellphones.
The agency said the stop was related to its investigation of the Chelsea explosion, although no one has been charged with a crime.
The New York Police Department released a photo of Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was wanted for questioning in the Saturday night explosions in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, de Blasio said on CNN.
Cell phones were discovered at the site of both bombings. Thankfully no one was injured.
The type of device used in Chelsea was a “pressure cooker bomb”, similar to the construction of the two devices that exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. On Sunday night, police blew up the device, rendering it safe.
Authorities converged on the apartment after one of five devices found at the Elizabeth train station exploded while a bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it.
Based on what is now known, there was also no connection to the incident earlier Saturday in Seaside Heights, N.J., where a pipe bomb exploded near a Marine charity run, de Blasio said.
The new information came just hours after a suspect in the weekend bombings was arrested Monday morning after a dramatic shootout in New Jersey.
A similar bomb was found four blocks away but it did not detonate. That includes investigating if an incendiary device was planted to cause the blast, a senior official familiar with the investigation told WNBC, our NBC station in NY.
The blast occurred at around 8:30 p.m. on West 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in downtown Manhattan.
“De Blasio said Rahami’s description – 5’6” tall, 200 pounds, brown hair and facial hair, considered armed and unsafe – has been sent out to New Yorkers via the city’s cell phone alert system. Except that Trump did not leap to any conclusions at the time, he simply stated the fact that a bomb had gone off, and followed that with “and nobody knows exactly what’s going on, but boy, we are living in a time”.
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No one was injured in the blast – most likely because registration problems delayed the start of the race, so no one was near the garbage can when the explosion happened.
