Hours after the scare, patrol officers spotted the suspect driving his vehicle in Columbus Circle and pulled him over, O’Neill said. It said police are not trying to remove the man because they don’t know what’s inside his vehicle.
Advertisement
Donald tweeted that the suspect was in police custody around 7:55 a.m. He is being treated as an emotionally disturbed person. He’s suspected of tossing a hoax bomb through the window of a police vehicle.
Police sent a robot equipped with a camera and microphone to communicate with the man, according to a report on Fox 5 “Good Day New York”. His last employment was as a cab driver and police said he had a TLC license. “They are reflective of the best of this police department”, Bratton said.
As a result of the incident, the 1, A, B, C and D trains were bypassing the 59th Street-Columbus Circle stop in both directions for several hours but have since resumed normal service with delays, the MTA said.
The man suspected of throwing the suspicious package was taken into custody this morning at Columbus Circle, about 10 blocks north of Times Square, after a standoff with police from inside his van. The electronic device landed on the dashboard of the van, parked at West 46th and Seventh Avenue, just before 11:35 p.m. Wednesday.
The suspect, identified as 52-year-old Hector Meneses, was in a Gold SUV in Columbus Circle.
So, instead of jumping out of the vehicle to save their own lives, the officers drove 1½ blocks away to make sure nothing happened to the crowd of civilians. A sergeant in the NYPD van, assigned to the Times Square Unit, immediately drove out of Times Square.
“We weren’t going to let anything happen in Times Square”, Cybulski said at a Thursday morning press conference. The two started backing pedestrians away from the suspicious package as the New York City Police Department Bomb Squad was called. They then retreated to a safe area.
The bomb squad determined the device to be a hoax, O’Neill said.
Advertisement
According to cops, the device turned out to be a fake bomb consisting of a red candle, an LED light, pieces of tin foil and wrapped in a white sheet.
