Rice Cookers That Prompted Bomb Scare in Subway Investigated as 'Hoax Devices'

An hour later, just as the police had determined the two devices were not explosives, they received another call alerting them to a third suspicious device placed by a garbage can farther uptown, in the Chelsea neighborhood.

By 10 a.m., officials announced that all three devices had turned out to be empty rice cookers that posed no danger. But by then the discovery of the appliances, which were initially believed to be pressure cookers, had disrupted commutes and created a flurry of police activity and news alerts that heightened fears and rattled New York City residents.

Officials said they were seeking a person of interest who was seen on video leaving the two devices on the subway platform at the Fulton Street station, though they cautioned that they did not know his intent and that he was not yet suspected of any criminal activity.

“The time, rush hour; the place, a subway station; the item, rice cookers that could be mistaken for pressure cookers,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism. “It certainly is the kind of thing that we would want to know why is he placing them there and what is the purpose of that.”

The bomb scare echoed several incidents that have shaken residents in New York and elsewhere, including the use of pressure cookers in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and an explosion in Chelsea in 2016, as well as a subway bombing in Manhattan in 2017.

The police were not sure whether the two rice cookers left at the subway station were related to the one discovered later in Chelsea, at the corner of 16th Street and Seventh Avenue. All three were the same model rice cooker.

Miller said it was possible the rice cookers were in the trash “and this guy picked them up and discarded them.”

“As you all know,” he added, “there are people with shopping carts who pick up things on the street and put them back down on the street, and that’s kind of a fact of urban life.”

Still, the timing of the incident and the placement of the devices had led officials to investigate whether the rice cookers were intended as “a hoax device” meant to incite panic, Miller said.

The rice cookers at the Fulton Street station, in the Financial District, were found on the platform for the No. 2 and 3 subway lines and on an upper mezzanine. Fulton Street is the fifth busiest station in New York City’s subway system, with nearly 93,000 passengers using it on the average weekday, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Video footage showed a dark-haired man removing the appliances from a shopping cart in both locations in the subway station, Miller said.

As officers evacuated the station, the bomb squad and the Emergency Service Unit were called in to investigate. Service on multiple subway lines was interrupted and delayed.

“As ever, we always put safety first,” said Andy Byford, the subway’s leader.

Outside of the station Friday morning, law enforcement officials and transit workers in orange vests stood in front of the entrances, directing traffic and answering questions from tourists and frustrated commuters.

Then, around 8:10 a.m., the police received the report of a suspicious package in Chelsea, said Chief Edward Delatorre, the head of the Police Department’s transit bureau. Streets around the area were closed and a separate counterterrorism unit was immediately dispatched.

The police had not yet determined where the third rice cooker came from or who may have discarded it. Detectives were searching for video to determine if the same man was involved.

Elizabeth Zechella, 40, who lives nearby on 16th Street, first heard reports on Twitter about the suspicious package and police activity.

“I live right here, so I was a little nervous,” Zechella said. “I made sure my door was locked and my first thought was some kind of an active shooter.”

In December 2017, a man detonated a homemade pipe bomb in a crowded subway passage near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, also during the morning commute. The weapon failed to fully detonate, and the attacker was the only one injured.

A year earlier, a pressure cooker packed with shrapnel exploded in Chelsea on 23rd Street, injuring at least 29 people. Hours later, the authorities found, disarmed and removed a second explosive device just blocks away.

Pressure cookers were also used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, where the devices were based on a model mentioned in publications issued by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen.

More recently, a motorcycle backfiring in Times Square sounded enough like gunfire that it caused mass panic and a stampede as pedestrians fled from what they feared was a mass shooting.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.