This morning’s subway commute in New York City was disrupted when “two abandoned objects that looked like pressure cookers prompted an evacuation of a major lower Manhattan subway station” reports the Associated Press.
All indication is that the two objects were “deliberately placed to spark fear.” Governor Andrew Cuomo told WCBS-AM that “the suspicion is that they were placed there to suggest that they were electronic devices and possible bombs.”
The police swarmed the Fulton Street station around 7a.m. after suspicious packages were reported. “This is a frightening world we live in, and all of these situations have to be taken seriously because God forbid one day…it’s a real device…we learned the hard way after 9/11, and we are prepared” said Cuomo.
De Blasio thanked the police and “everyone who kept calm through this.” New York Police Department Counterterrorism Chief James Waters tweeted photos of the objects, which looked like pressure cookers. Our country knows all too well how deadly pressure cookers can be, for example when they were used as explosives in the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013. In September 2016, a pressure-cooker turned into a bomb went off in the Manhattan neighborhood Chelsea and injured 30 people.
Our @NYPDCT Bomb Squad has cleared the devices inside of Fulton Street subway station in Lower Manhattan. They are NOT explosive devices.
Out of an abundance of caution officers have searched nearby stations. pic.twitter.com/Y32I9DFEDf
— NYPDCounterterrorism (@NYPDCT) August 16, 2019
