Manhattan bombing suspect, Ahmad Khan rahami was sleeping like a baby by a dank New Jersey pub while the whole world hunted for him!
According to mechanic Chris Ricco, he thought Afghan immigrant Ahmad Khan Rahami was a bum
when he spotted him in the doorway of Merdie’s Tavern in Linden between 10 and 11 am.
A bar owner Harinder “Harry” Bains woke him up from his sleep only for him to rain abusive curses on him, like, “Go f–k yourself! I’m sleeping."
Bains said as soon as he saw his face he was petrified! According to him,“I was watching CNN news all day,”
Bains told The Post. “In my mind I said, ‘Oh, my God, this guy looks so much
like the guy.’ ” So he tricked Rahami into staying
put by assuring him the bar wouldn’t open for another hour, then called the
cops.
According to NJ News/CNN, One of four cops who responded saw
Rahami and immediately recognized him from the FBI’s wanted poster, Capt. James
Sarnicki said.
Modal TriggerAhmad Khan Rahami is
wheeled away on a stretcher after exchanging gunfire with police officers.Photo:
AP
“The officer then told him, ‘Show
your hands,’ and the suspect pulled out a handgun and fired a round,” Sarnicki
said.
The bullet hit the officer’s
bulletproof vest in his abdominal area, and he was not seriously injured,
Sarnicki said.
Rahami fired another shot that
smashed through the windshield of another cop’s cruiser and “glanced off” the
officer’s forehead, Sarnicki said.
“There was a lot of bleeding because
it’s the facial area, but he’s going to be OK,” Sarnicki said.
A running gun battle ensued, with
Rahami firing shots as he tried to escape on Elizabeth Avenue, said Jack Mazza,
who works with Ricco.
“The cops were chasing him and he
was shooting while he was running. I guess he was trying to shoot the cops but
he was hitting passing cars,” Mazza said.
More cops raced to the scene,
“returned fire and were able to take him down,” Sarnicki said.
One officer was shot in the hand,
authorities said.
Bains described his act as dumb luck
instead of heroism.
“Who in the world would think this
wanted terrorist was loitering like a homeless man outside my bar?” he said.
Rahami was shot in the leg and
underwent surgery Monday afternoon at University Hospital in Newark, acting
Union County Prosecutor Grace Park
In addition to the Saturday night
blast that injured 29 people on West 23rd Street, Rahami is suspected of
leaving a pressure-cooker device that failed to detonate four blocks north.
The pressure cooker on 27th Street
was in a bag with a letter that made reference to previous terrorists,
including Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev,
The Tsarnaev brothers used similar
pressure-cooker devices packed with shrapnel to kill three people and injure
264 others near the race’s finish line in 2013.
He also is suspected of earlier
planting three pipe bombs — one of which exploded harmlessly — in a garbage can
along the route of a Marine Corps charity run in Seaside Park, NJ.
He left five more devices found in a
backpack at the Elizabeth, NJ, train station Sunday night, cops said.
Rahami was charged in Union County,
NJ.
He remained hospitalized and was
being held in lieu of $5.2 million bail.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara
said the feds, too, would put together a “comprehensive and thorough” set of
charges in the multiple bombing incidents.
FBI Assistant Director William
Sweeney said there was “no indication” Rahami was part of “a cell operating in
the area or in the city.”
Testing of the unexploded Chelsea
bomb revealed it contained the highly explosive compound HMTD, law enforcement
sources said.
Instructions for making HMTD can be
found online, with one site describing it as “EXCEEDINGLY unstable and
dangerous.”
Modal TriggerPolice work at the
scene where Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspect in a Sept. 17 explosion in New York
City and two bombings in New Jersey, was arrested following a shootout with
police in Linden, New Jersey.Photo: EPA
Rahami was first identified as a
suspect through the old-school, mobile flip phones that were used as triggering
devices on the bombs planted in Chelsea and at the Jersey Shore, sources said.
Rahami bought the cellphones in his
own name last year at a Family Dollar store in Perth Amboy, NJ, according to
the sources.
“He was dumb,” one law enforcement
source said.
A fingerprint lifted from the failed
Chelsea bomb was also matched to prints taken when Rahami became a naturalized
US citizen, sources said.
Rahami’s brother and sister were
among three men and two women who were stopped by the feds Sunday night while
traveling through Brooklyn in a car tied to Rahami. They were all released
without charges after questioning, sources said.
At least one of Rahami’s relatives
was carrying a passport and a plane ticket, and was suspected of being en route
to JFK Airport to flee the country for fear of being arrested, the sources
said.
Rahami’s sister cooperated with the
feds during questioning.
Additional reporting by Philip Messing and Jamie
Schram
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