On Friday morning, a lower Manhattan subway hub was evacuated, eight subway lines were diverted during rush hour, and a few blocks in Chelsea were frozen after three suspicious packages—which turned out to be harmless rice cookers—were found. Now police are looking for a person who was "observed in the area of the Fulton Street Subway Station with a shopping cart and a suspicious device."
The NYPD says that at about 7 a.m., officers responded to 911 calls about "suspicious packages" at the Fulton Street station along the 2 and 3 lines and one at the corner at 16th Street and 7th Avenue. The devices were deemed safe hours later.
During a press conference, authorities said that there was video of a man placing the rice cookers at the station. The person is considered a person of interest at this point and not a suspect.
The NYPD has not conclusively linked the Fulton Street and Chelsea incidents together; a spokesperson said they are investigating that possibility.
An NYPD wanted poster shows another image of the person of interest, showing his "Amazon Prime Day" t-shirt.
From the NYPD wanted poster
The investigation comes three years after 31 people were injured by a pressure cooker rigged into an explosive device on West 23rd Street in Chelsea in the summer of 2016. Ahmad Khan Rahimi was ultimately convicted for planting the bomb here and another in New Jersey as part of a terrorist attack.
Anyone with information in regard to these incidents or the identity of the individual is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM, or on Twitter @ NYPDTips.
