A homeless man is facing charges for allegedly placing two devices that looked like pressure cookers in a New York City subway station, forcing an evacuation and snarling the morning commute.
Larry Kenton Griffin II, of Bruno, West Virginia, was awaiting arraignment late on Saturday in Manhattan's central booking after he was released from a New York hospital where he was being treated and under observation. Police did not specify what, if any, injuries or condition he was being treated for.
Police announced on Saturday evening that Griffin, 26, was charged with the placing of a false bomb. He was taken into police custody just after midnight Saturday in the Bronx, a day after he was seen in surveillance video at Manhattan's Fulton subway station holding one of the objects police identified as rice cookers and determined they were not explosives.
New York City police said security cameras captured a man pulling the cookers out of a shopping cart and placing them in the Fulton Street subway station near the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.
A third cooker of the same make, year and model was found about three kilometres on a sidewalk in the Chelsea neighbourhood, prompting another police investigation.
Dozens of suspicious packages are reported daily in the city, but the proximity of the subway station to the site of the September 11 attacks served to heighten anxiety before police gave the all-clear.
Multiple subway lines were partially suspended during the police investigation, and delays continued throughout the morning.
Pressure cookers packed with explosives killed three people and injured hundreds when a pair of Islamic extremists detonated them during the Boston Marathon in 2013.
Australian Associated Press
