Thieves lead police to NY pressure cooker bomb

Authorities search for two people seen on security footage taking out device and walking off with bag

By AFP 20 September 2016, 1:41 am

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Crime scene investigators work at the scene of Saturday's explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, in New York, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

NEW YORK, United States — Thieves inadvertently helped police find a bomb in New York’s fashionable neighborhood of Chelsea, it emerged Monday after the suspect wanted for planting the device and detonating another was arrested.

The pressure cooker device was discovered on 27th Street late Saturday — four blocks away from the site where a similar bomb exploded, wounding 29 people.

“We have a video of two persons who picked up the bag, took the device out of it and then walked off with the bag,” New York chief of detectives Robert Boyce told a news conference Monday.

“They looked like there were two gentlemen just strolling up and down Seventh Avenue at the time,” Boyce added. “Once they picked up the bag, they seemed incredulous they had actually picked this up off the street.”

Police are now urgently trying to track down and speak to the two witnesses.

It was “difficult to say right now” whether the thieves inadvertently pulled a wire on the device, which may have disabled the bomb, Boyce said.

But a police spokesman told AFP they did not disarm the device, which was later safely defused by law enforcement and sent to the FBI for analysis.

Ahmad Khan Rahami is taken into custody after a shootout with police Monday, in Linden, NJ, September 19, 2016. (Moshe Weiss via AP)

In the neighboring state of New Jersey, two homeless men also found the backpack that contained five pipe bombs overnight in Elizabeth, the hometown of Afghan-born suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami.

The men picked the bag up hoping it might contain something valuable and walked down the street before realizing there was something wrong, Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage told reporters.

The homeless men found the package going through a garbage can, Bollwage was quoted as saying. But when they noticed wires and a pipe, they dropped the bag and went straight to the police.

Officers later disarmed the nest of bombs, accidentally detonating one of the devices in the process, but causing no injuries, the FBI said.

Police captured Rahami in New Jersey on Monday after shooting him in the leg during a shootout. He is wanted in connection with the New York bombing and a separate pipe bomb attack on the Jersey shore last Saturday