Related News
Afghan immigrant taken into custody
Print Edition
AN Afghan immigrant wanted for questioning in the bombings that rocked a New York City neighborhood and a New Jersey shore town was taken into custody yesterday after a shootout with police in New Jersey, a law enforcement official said.
WABC-TV footage showed a man believed to be 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami being loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher in Linden, New Jersey. He appeared to be conscious and looking around.
The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity, said two officers were shot in the gun battle.
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.
Authorities said the blasts were looking increasingly like an act of terrorism with a foreign connection.
Police did not disclose how they zeroed in on Rahami but were known to be poring over surveillance video. At the same time, five people who were pulled over in a vehicle on Sunday night were being questioned by the FBI, officials said.
The shootout came after a weekend of fear and dread in New York and New Jersey.
In addition to the blast that injured 29 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday, an unexploded pressure cooker bomb was found blocks away, and a pipe bomb exploded in a New Jersey shore town before a charity race. No one was injured there. On Sunday, five explosive devices were discovered in a trash can at an Elizabeth train station.
Citing the FBI, New Jersey State Police said yesterday that the bombings in Chelsea and the New Jersey shore town Seaside Park were connected.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said as investigators gathered information, they learned there were “certain commonalities among the bombs,” leading authorities to believe “that there was a common group behind the bombs.”
Around the time Rahami was taken into custody, President Barack Obama was in New York on a previously scheduled visit for a meeting of the UN General Assembly, and said it was “extremely fortunate” nobody was killed in the bombings.
He called on Americans to show the world “we will never give in to fear.”
“We all have a role to play as citizens to make sure we don’t succumb to that fear. And there’s no better example of that than the people of New York and New Jersey,” the president said. “Folks around here, they don’t get scared.”
Early yesterday, FBI agents swarmed an apartment above a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth that is tied to Rahami. The Rahami family lives in the apartment.
The restaurant, First American Fried Chicken, is owned by Rahami’s father and has also employed some of his brothers, Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage said.
He said Rahami’s father and two brothers sued the city after it passed an ordinance requiring the restaurant to close early because of complaints from neighbors about it being a late-night nuisance.
Ryan McCann, of Elizabeth, said that he often ate at the restaurant and recently began seeing Rahami working there more.
“He’s always in there. He’s a very friendly guy, that’s what’s so scary. It’s hard when it’s home,” McCann said.
On Sunday, FBI agents in Brooklyn stopped “a vehicle of interest” in the investigation of the Manhattan explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.
Langmesser 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 car were being questioned at an FBI building in Manhattan.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation.
No one has been charged, and the investigation is continuing, Langmesser said.
Cuomo, touring the site of Saturday’s blast in Chelsea, said the unexploded pressure cooker device appeared “similar in design” to the bomb that exploded in Chelsea.
On Sunday, a federal law enforcement official said the Chelsea bomb contained a residue of Tannerite, an explosive often used for target practice that can be picked up in many sporting goods stores. The discovery of Tannerite may be important as authorities probe whether the two New York City devices and the pipe bomb at the Jersey shore are connected.
Cellphones were discovered at the site of both bombings, but no Tannerite residue was identified in the New Jersey bomb remnants, in which a black powder was detected, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to comment on an ongoing investigation.
The pipe bomb exploded on Saturday in Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity 5K race to benefit Marines and sailors. The race was canceled and no one was injured.
The bombings in New York City and New Jersey happened the same day that a man stabbed and injured nine people at a Minnesota mall before an off-duty police officer fatally shot him. The St Cloud police chief said the man reportedly made at least one reference to Allah and asked a victim if he or she was Muslim before attacking. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
