Timeline of the New York and New Jersey bomb incidents
An investigation is underway after two bombs exploded, and several others were discovered, in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend. The suspect linked to the incidents, Ahmad Khan Rahami was apprehended Monday morning in Linden, N.J., after a shootout with police.
Below, a timeline and interactive map of the events.
Saturday afternoon: Explosion in Seaside Park, N.J.
The first explosion occurred Saturday afternoon in Seaside Park, N.J., where thousands of runners were gearing up for a 5K charity race to benefit U.S. Marines and sailors.
The unexpectedly high turnout had delayed the race’s start time, so few people were nearby when the explosive device detonated. No one was injured, and the race was subsequently canceled.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is steering the investigation, and a preliminary sweep of the scene revealed that there were three pipe bomb devices wired together along the route of the race. Only one had exploded.
Investigators noted the use of cellphones as timers in the New Jersey bombs as well as the explosive that was detonated in New York City Saturday night. There was also a cellphone connected to a pressure cooker bomb discovered on West 27th Street in Manhattan. That device did not detonate, and clues on the phone reportedly led police to identify Rahami as a person of interest.
The FBI announced Monday morning that the agency was looking to question 28-year-old Rahami in the New Jersey and New York incidents. Hours later he was in custody.
Saturday evening: Blast rocks Chelsea, another undetonated device is found blocks away
Hours after the explosion that left runners unscathed in New Jersey, another device was detonated in New York City’s busy Chelsea neighborhood at around 8:30 p.m. Saturday.
The explosion, which officials later said came from a device detonated either inside or near a dumpster, injured 29 people, shattered windows, and sent shrapnel flying down West 23rd Street.
Later Saturday night, state troopers discovered another explosive, four blocks away, on West 27th Street. The NYPD bomb squad took the second device — which had apparently been made using a pressure cooker, wires and a cellphone — to the department firing range in the Bronx, where it was safely defused before being sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., for further examination.
Sunday evening: Backpack filled with bombs discovered at a train station in Elizabeth, N.J.
Five more explosive devices were discovered Sunday night at a train station in Elizabeth, N.J.
Two men were reportedly leaving a restaurant near the train station when they found a backpack filled with wires and pipe sitting on top of a garbage can. At around 8:45 p.m., the men called the Elizabeth Police Department, who called the Union County bomb squad.
The FBI responded using robots and determined that the backpack contained five bombs.
At approximately 12:30 a.m., the robots were attempting to disarm one of the bombs when it accidentally detonated. No one was injured, but one robot was destroyed and the other lost an arm.
Meanwhile, in New York, up to five people were taken into FBI custody following a traffic stop in Brooklyn Sunday night.
“We did a traffic stop of a vehicle of interest in the investigation,” read a tweet from the FBI’s New York field office. “No one has been charged with any crime. The investigation is continuing.”
Authorities are investigating links between the backpack of explosives and the bombs that went off in Manhattan and Seaside Park on Saturday. According to details released by the FBI Monday, the last known address for Ahmad Khan Rahami — the person of interest in both the Manhattan and New Jersey explosions — was in Elizabeth, N.J.
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