On Sunday, September 18, 2016, two homeless men found five pipe bombs in a backpack on top of a dumpster near the Elizabeth train station. They called the police immediately and the FBI was called in to detonate the bombs, one of which is believed to have been live. The police say surveillance cameras don’t show any other packages being left in the area.
On Monday afternoon, police arrested 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahimi, an Afghani citizen who was connected with the five pipe bombs, as well as with the bombings at Seaside Park NJ and Manhattan on Saturday, September 17. Rahimi took a bullet in a shootout with the cops during his arrest and was taken to University Hospital in Newark NJ.
One of the bombs exploded when FBI agents were attempting to detonate it at 12:30 a.m. on Monday, September 19, but thankfully no one was injured. The remaining four bombs have been encased in a bomb proof sealant and have been taken to the Middlesex County Fire Academy so that they can be used as evidence against Rahimi when he is released from the hospital.
So far police say that it seems that Rahimi was not intending for the bombs to go off, but was trying to pass them off to an unknown source.
The mayor of Elizabeth, Mr. Bollwage said that he was “extremely concerned for everybody in the state and the country, where somebody can go and drop a backpack into a garbage can that has multiple explosives in it.”
The two men who found the bombs went on record saying that they were “just doing the right thing.” A GoFundMe page for the men has raised over $25,000.
Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyregion/pipe-bombs-found-near-train-station-in-elizabeth-nj-official-says.html http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/09/21/gofundme-homeless-man-friend-who-found-nj-pipe-bombs-nearing-16k/90791102/
Picture Sources:
http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/POL_evidence_nj_bombing_ml_160920_4x3_992.jpg http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2016_38/1715411/160919-rahami-mugshot-mbe-647p_3bdef670cec0df55e25e0a180eaf47ea.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg http://cdn.abclocal.go.com/content/wabc/images/cms/automation/vod/1519498_630x354.jpg