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 Monday after a shootout with police in New Jersey, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
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 U.S. 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 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.
Also on Saturday, a man who authorities say referred to Allah wounded nine people in a stabbing rampage at a Minnesota mall before being shot to death by an off-duty police officer. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
Authorities have not drawn any connection between the violence in Minnesota and the bombings in the New York area.
Citing the FBI, New Jersey State Police said Monday that the bombings in Chelsea and the New Jersey shore town Seaside Park were connected.
New York Gov. 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.”
Before Rahami’s capture, Cuomo said investigators have no reason to believe there are further threats, but the public should “be on constant guard.”
Early Monday, 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.
In the immediate aftermath of the New York bombing, de New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Cuomo were careful to say there was no evidence of a link to international terrorism. Both said Monday that appeared to be changing.
“The more we learn with each passing hour is it looks more like terrorism,” de Blasio said in an interview on NY1 News. Cuomo said on MSNBC: “Today’s information suggests it may be foreign-related, but we’ll see where it goes.”
On Sunday night, FBI agents in Brooklyn stopped “a vehicle of interest” in the investigation of the Manhattan explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.
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 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 investigation.
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.
Cellphones were discovered at the site of both the New York and New Jersey 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 the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
The pipe bomb that exploded Saturday in Seaside Park went off before a charity 5K race to benefit Marines and sailors. The race was canceled.
One of the five devices found at the Elizabeth train station exploded while a bomb squad robot tried to disarm it. No one was hurt.
(AP)
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19 Responses
We MUST Openly acknowledge we are ate WAR with RADiCAL ISLAM. We are NOT at war with Islam. Many millions of Moslems are undoubtedly fine people. However, while not all Moslems are Terrorists, The Vast Majority of Global terrorists ARE MOSLEMS. There are Moslem Terrorists in every part of the world – in every continent! It is Radical Moslem terrorists in Afganistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, France, England, Russia, Philipines, Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, Spain, Turkey, Israel, Canada and the USA that have struck civilians in their war to conquer the world! By Showing We Reaalize Who we are at World War for our Survival We WIll Show We Are RESOLUTE and DETERMINED to Stop THem And Destroy them! That we will not Waver out of Fear of them Or Due to STUPID DUMB LOyalty to Politicaly Correct Openness to All If Our Security Is At Stake! For in Gaza and Gloablly these Fiends are Using Our Democratic Principles of Tolerance Against Us to Enslave us!
@BenK – update your browser to have special check. Or maybe get a copy of Microsoft Word.
Maybe all were seeing is a mental issue or workplace violence. Don’t you dear jump to conclusions because of his name or religious beliefs, that would be heaven forbid PROFILING!! This might just be because of too many guns on the street and have to do with the price of pressure cookers.
spell* check (@64bitsomething)
Having crossed stateliness from NJ to NY renders this into a Federal crime, rendering him eligible for death penalty.
Afghan immigrant??! And Hillary wants to bring 10,000 of these animals into the US!
HELLLLLOOOOO, WAKE UP!
Does anyone recall how many rainbows were over New York and New Jersey this Summer?
….and the even more scary DOUBLE RAINBOW over our heads just last week?!
We better DAVEN HARD NOW!
DOUBLE RAINBOWS = The Arizal stated that a very bright rainbow is a sign of the coming of MOSHIACH! WOW!
@Big A:
Yes, absolutely. It is all about the rainbows!
Wait!!!
Suddenly is okay to run after these terrorists? The world doesn’t condemn America?
What happened to caring about terrorists and their oppression?
Oh,
That’s only is Israel. The rest of the world is allowed to fight terrorism. Israel must suffer.
To Nos 8 and 9.
There are some guys who show up on Eastern Parkway outside 770 every few weeks and run up and down the street waving yellow flags. There are also some guys in Park Slope who run up and down the street with rainbow flags. I’m not sure either is a good indicator that Moishiach is coming, much less who it might be.
In reading the 10 comments, I didn’t see anybody mention the following:
EVERYTHING that is due to HASHEM.
It is frustrating when EYEWITNESS NEWS(ABC 7 NY,reporter Ken Rosato uses the word “coincidence” or Linden,NJ’s mayor
states “It doesn’t add up” BUT Yidden should feel it’s their duty to spread show non-Yidden the YAD HASHEM in these “coincidences”!
Ahmad Rahami was found sleeping in the hallway of a Linden,NJ bar. The owner saw him as a homeless man and called the Police. An officer(wearing a bullet-proof vest) responded. The officer recognized who the sleeping man was- Ahmad Rahami woke up and started firing. He had to fire 3 times, yet didn’t kill Rahami; that way law officers can still question him.
YIDDEN, should ALWAYS REMEMBER- YAD HASHEM and SHOW THEIR APPRECIATION-to HASHEM for HIS (CONSTANT) Kindness and Concern for Yidden (and,even non- Yidden) BEFORE people need “wake-up” calls.
Therefore,as yidden know,for example,when davening “We first THANK HASHEM, then we may our requests to HASHEM”!
Re: kenzain
Think the liberals will now want to ban pressure cookers? It’s not the man that kills, it’s the pressure cooker! second amendment 🙂
What is the moderator’s email address?
Is it too late to change some “typos” that I see -in the moderator’s email to me?
can America afford 4 more years of PC. Vote Trump for a better tomorrow
I’m surprised, there are 15 comments before me and no one mentions the miraculous chasdai Hashem we witnessed here. First the race is pushed off for an hour. The pressure cooker bomb failed to explode. Homeless scavengers “happen” to come across the 5 bombs. Finally the way they found this guy I think is another chesed.
I’m sorry I now see commenter # 12 says what I said.
this lowlife should be given Muslim hospitality such as Bing put in a cage and then Lit on fire let them know we learn from your Waze
good. they caught him.
now he can be given first class medical treatment, hire s great legal team (maybe Obama’s attorney general Holder can represent him, as he’s represented terrorists in the past), and the best legal minds can get him help after he clams up.
he may even be successful in suing the police for harassment or damages.
I’m so glad we don’t treat these people like terrorists anymore. because that just breeds terrorist. or something.
um. I think it’s time for me to go back to my safe space now.