Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Joe Esposito (r. to l.), Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday surveyed what remained of the dumpster in which the bomb was hidden.
By Michael V. Cusenza
The man authorities say is responsible for conducting and attempting to conduct bombings in Chelsea and several spots in New Jersey over the weekend has been charged with using and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction, among other federal offenses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, a.k.a. Ahmad Rahimi, was arraigned on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey on charges connected to Rahami’s alleged detonation of an explosive device and efforts to detonate explosives in New York City, and the 28-year-old’s alleged efforts to detonate explosives in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and Elizabeth, New Jersey.
More than 30 people were injured as a result of the detonation of a bomb that Rahami allegedly hid inside a small dumpster on Saturday on West 23rd Street. A second explosive device that did not detonate was found on West 27th Street.
Rahimi, a U.S. citizen of Afhani descent, was apprehended by Linden (NJ) Police on Monday morning.
“Now, we’ve talked about this over the last two years – how we’ve foiled 20 plots in New York City, and that was done by a very professional, highly trained law enforcement agencies,” Police Commissioner Jim O’Neill said on Sunday. “And his violent, criminal act is going to be solved by those same people – by that same group of people. So, New York City residents can rest assured that we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
If convicted, Rahimi faces hundreds of years in prison. As of Wednesday night, no motive had been made public.
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday praised the resiliency of New Yorkers, and the swift actions of first responders.
“I…saw an extraordinary response by the NYPD, FDNY, Office of Emergency Management,” he noted. “Folks said to me in the neighborhood how reassured they were by the speedy response last night and by the continued police presence.”
In a late-breaking development on Wednesday, the NYPD and Federal Bureau of Investigation reached out to the public for help in identifying two unknown men who were captured on closed-circuit television recordings as they walked on Saturday night on West 27th Street between 6th and 7th avenues, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the same hour that Rahimi’s alleged explosive device had detonated on West 23rd Street.
According to authorities, the CC-TV footage “indicates that these individuals allegedly located a piece of luggage on the sidewalk, removed an improvised explosive device from the luggage, and then left the vicinity leaving the device behind, but took the luggage.”
The NYPD and FBI have made it clear that both agencies are interested in speaking to these individuals and recovering the luggage.
Anyone with information is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at (800) 577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, (888) 57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit info by logging onto NYPDCrimestoppers.com or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. The FBI’s Toll-Free Tipline at 1-800-CALL-FBI is available too. All correspondences are strictly confidential.
