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Investigators Sift for Clues in Hunt for New York Bomber
Bombs Filled With Shrapnel Give Clues Into New York Explosion
(about 2 hours later)
With no international terrorist group claiming responsibility for a powerful explosion in Manhattan, the authorities on Sunday were combing through surveillance videos, interviewing eyewitnesses and sifting through remnants of the bomb itself for clues into an attack that left dozens wounded.
A bomb that injured 29 people on Saturday in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and another that failed to detonate, were filled with shrapnel and made with pressure cookers, flip phones and Christmas lights that set off a powerful explosive compound, law enforcement officials said on Sunday.
Investigators are also looking at whether the same person or group was responsible for an explosion earlier on Saturday in New Jersey, which involved a device that was constructed using some similar materials.
Both bombs appeared designed to create maximum chaos and fatalities — they also provided a trove of clues even as any suspects remained unnervingly at large.
No one was injured in the New Jersey explosion.
A top law enforcement official said that pressure cookers were filled with “fragmentation materials.” The bomb that exploded, at 23rd Street, was filled with small bearings or metal BBs. A second device on 27th Street that did not explode appeared to be filled with the same material, the official said.
The New York Police Department, joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, mounted a large-scale hunt for the person or people behind the attack. Officials said they did not know of any motive — political or social.
Late on Sunday, two senior law enforcement officials said they had identified a “person of interest” in the bombing, though they did not refer to that person as a suspect.
The search took on added urgency as leaders from around the world travel to New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly this week.
Senior law enforcement officials also said that they were increasingly focused on the possibility that the attack was connected to a bombing that took place 11 hours earlier in New Jersey, but the authorities still needed to compare all the bombs before drawing any conclusions. There, three pipe bombs were tied together, placed in a trash can and also employed by a flip cellphone as a timing mechanism, according to officials. Only one of the three pipe bombs detonated and no one was injured. Officials said the explosive in that device appeared to be black powder.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the powerful explosion that rocked the Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night, injuring 29 people, did not appear to be linked to international terrorism, but that it was a powerful bomb designed to kill.
Officials said they did not know of any motive — political or social — for any of the attacks. Early on Sunday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said “there is no evidence of an international terrorism connection with this incident,” noting that no international terrorist group has claimed responsibility.
“This is one of the nightmare scenarios,” he said at a news conference on Sunday. “We really were very lucky that there were no fatalities.”
In contrast, the Islamic State was quick on Sunday to claim a stabbing attack at a Minnesota shopping mall on Saturday night that left nine people injured.
Four blocks away from the blast site, the authorities found and removed what they described as a second device. Mr. Cuomo said the devices appeared to be similar in design and one federal law enforcement official, who agreed to speak about the continuing investigation only on condition of anonymity, described it as a “viable device” that failed to detonate.
The bombing comes at a time of increasing nervousness around the world after terrorist attacks in Belgium and France, creating a climate where even a false report of gunfire at John F. Kennedy Airport recently triggered widespread panic.
While government officials had initially been dismissive of a link between the New Jersey and New York attacks, evidence from the crime scenes seemed to lead them to change their thinking. The New Jersey blast took place 11 hours earlier when an improvised device exploded in a garbage can near the course of a charity race that was about to start in a small town on the Jersey Shore. That device went off around 9:30 a.m. near the boardwalk in Seaside Park, according to the Ocean County sheriff, Michael G. Mastronardy. The race, the Seaside Semper Five, a five-kilometer run and charity event along the waterfront that raises money for members of the United States Marine Corps and their families, was canceled.
“This is one of the nightmare scenarios,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Sunday. “We really were very lucky that there were no fatalities.”
Officials noted that there had been no claim of responsibility from any terror network. In contrast, the Islamic State was quick on Sunday to claim a stabbing attack at a Minnesota shopping mall on Saturday night that left nine people injured.
The search for the person or people behind the attack in New York took on added urgency as President Obama and leaders from around the world travel to New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly this week.
Mr. Cuomo said the explosion of the Manhattan bomb — which was placed under a Dumpster made of heavy gauge steel — was so strong that it caused extensive property damage on both sides of the street, shattering windows up and down the block and sending shrapnel and debris flying. The mangled Dumpster remained roped off by crime-scene tape as store owners and residents slowly filtered back into the area.
Tests showed that the explosive material in the 23rd Street bomb was similar to a commercially available compound called Tannerite, according to two law enforcement to two officials. It was unclear why Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio dismissed with such certainty a tie to international terror. Experts said the bomb’s construction offered conflicting clues.
The police were reviewing surveillance video and continued to scour the area for clues while trying to understand the choice of location for the bomb: Pointedly not Times Square, a commuter hub, train or landmark, which have been spectacular targets of terrorism in the past.
It is made by combining ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, is frequently used in exploding targets at firearms ranges and has rarely been used in improvised explosive devices in the United States. But the materials are easy to buy here because each one on its own is not an explosive.
The nondescript area — a sidewalk, near some Dumpsters in a residential area of Chelsea — held its own significance.
At the same time, other evidence from the bomb seemed to point overseas. Pressure cookers have been a container of choice for many improvised explosive devices over the years. They were used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 based on a model in publications put out by Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.
“You’ve got to go somewhere,” said a New York law enforcement official who agreed to speak about the continuing investigation only on the condition of anonymity. “So the question is: Is the location significant, in terms of motive? And we don’t know that 23rd Street has any particular significance.”
An expert on IEDs used by terrorists around the world said that a device constructed with a cellular phone as a timer and Christmas lights as an initiator would indicate a higher-than-average competence than is usually found in the United States. “Most of what we in the United States is a pipe bomb with black powder or smokeless powder or a simple hobby fuse,” said the expert, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he does sensitive work for government agencies. “This would be the high-end of sophistication for IEDs in the United States.”
Mr. Cuomo said that while “there is no evidence of an international terrorism connection with this incident,” it was still early in the investigation.
Mr. Cuomo said he was ordering an additional 1,000 New York State Police officers and National Guard members to be dispatched to major commuter hubs and Mayor de Blasio said New Yorkers should expect to see a heightened police presence throughout the city, including additional patrols by the city’s heavily armed counter terrorism units.
“Whoever placed these bombs,” the governor said, “we will find them and they will be brought to justice.”
The police continued to search the area around the blast site and fanned out across the city chasing leads and trying to sort through a variety of claims of responsibility — from Twitter to websites to 911 calls — most of which they dismissed as unrelated.
Shortly after making his remarks, Mr. Cuomo toured the neighborhood with Mayor Bill de Blasio, seeking to ease the concerns of residents who remained on edge.
Late on Sunday, F.B.I. agents were seen tearing apart a car of an Uber driver, who said the law enforcement officials were searching for possible evidence related to the attack.
Mr. de Blasio, speaking at a separate news conference at Police Headquarters later on Sunday, said that while the bombing was clearly an intentional act, the motivation remained a mystery.
The bomb in Manhattan was placed under a Dumpster made of heavy-gauge steel, and was powerful enough to catapult the metal box across the street.
“We know it was a very serious incident,” the mayor said. “But we have a lot more work to do to say what kind of motive was behind this.”
The 29 people who were wounded mostly suffered cuts and abrasions and had all been released from the hospital by Sunday morning.
As world leaders descend on New York for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly this week, Mr. de Blasio said that security would be stepped up across the city.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill said the unexploded device was found by two state troopers as they walked down 27th Street after calls to 911 alerted the police to a suspicious device. It was being examined by bomb technicians at a police facility in Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx.
“You will see a lot of police presence,” he said.
New York City Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill said given that there was a bombing in the city and no suspect in custody, all New Yorkers should be particularly vigilant.
“I am concerned,” Mr. O’Neill said. But he vowed that “this violent criminal act is going to be solved.”
“We’re working around the clock on this,” assistant police commissioner J. Peter Donald, a department spokesman, said, adding that the most experienced detectives and agents on the Joint Terrorist Task Force were handling the investigation.
Mr. Cuomo said there did not appear to be an ongoing threat to the city but in an abundance of caution he was ordering an additional 1,000 New York State Police officers and National Guard members to be dispatched to major commuter hubs.
Moments after the blast, the police swarmed Chelsea’s streets, which reverberated across a city scarred by terrorism and vigilant about threats, just days after the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
As the authorities sought to identify what had caused the explosion, they described the second device as a pressure cooker resembling the one used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, according to the New York police official.
Commissioner O’Neill said the unexploded device was found by two state troopers as they walked down 27th Street as part of an effort to sweep the area for secondary devices. It is currently being examined by bomb technicians at a police facility in Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx.
They will try to peel apart the device to see what it is made of, what its components are: If it has signature properties that can link it to the kind of device used by terrorists in the past.
The explosion took place on a mild Saturday evening, drawing residents and tourists alike to the streets and the bars and restaurants in the neighborhood.
Luke McConnell, who was visiting from Colorado, was headed toward a restaurant on West 27th Street when the blast occurred.
“I felt it, like a concussive wave, heading towards me. Then there was a cloud of white smoke that came from the left side of 23rd Street near Sixth,” Mr. McConnell said. “There was no fire, just smoke.”
Witnesses said they could feel the explosion from several blocks away. Daniel Yount, 34, said he was standing on the roof of a building at 25th Street and Avenue of the Americas with friends.
“We felt the shock waves go through our bodies,” Mr. Yount said.
It was a startling scene, full of dark possibilities, for a city that endured the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but has so far been spared the kind of mayhem that has terrorized city after city around the world in the 15 years since.
The closest New York has come to an attack was in 2010, when the police found a crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks inside a sport utility vehicle in Times Square. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion.
Many of the injuries on Saturday were caused by shrapnel from the explosion.
The impact shattered windows, damaged cars and sent crowds running from the scene at an hour when Chelsea, always a popular destination, was filled with residents and tourists.
“It was the biggest blast I ever would imagine, lights flashing, glass shattering,” said a woman who was injured in the explosion.
The force of the explosion, she said, flung her into the air.
“It happened so fast I was thrown up and landed down, I didn’t know where it had come from,” said the woman, who would give only her first name, Helena, as she hobbled out of Bellevue Hospital Center at about 4 a.m. Sunday after she was treated for injuries to her eye and legs. “I realized there was blood streaming down my face, and I couldn’t see out of my eye.”
Images shared on social media and confirmed as authentic by a senior police official showed a silver-colored piece of cookware with wires and a cellphone attached.
The official said the Police Department’s bomb squad was taking the device to a department facility in the Bronx, where robots would inspect it.
Around 2:25 a.m., a Police Department truck towing a spherical chamber, which contained the device, headed east on West 27th Street and then turned north on Avenue of the Americas. Several police officers who had spent the evening on alert were visibly relieved, as one by one they let the few residents who had been waiting all night beside the caution tape return home.
The sidewalk where the explosion occurred is in front of a nondescript building wedged between a church and an apartment building.
Video captured before the explosion shows a man crossing “the street in the direction of where the device was found,” the same official said. But no video had yet been obtained that clearly showing anyone placing the device in the spot where it detonated.
“We don’t understand the target or the significance of it,” the police official said. “It’s by a pile of Dumpsters on a random sidewalk.”
