West Virginia Homeless Man Arrested in NYC Subway Bomb Scare; Rice Cookers Found

A homeless man from West Virginia was taken into police custody on In New York City on Saturday for placing two devices that looked like pressure cookers on a subway station on Friday morning. The discovery of the devices  caused an evacuation and significant delays on the morning commute.

Edited by: JV Staff

On Saturday morning, Dernot Shea, the Chief of Detectives of the NYPD posted a tweet that said a man seen in surveillance video holding one of the objects was taken into custody. Police identified the objects as rice cookers and determined they were not explosives, according to a PBS report. 

“Thank you to all who called in tips as well as our federal partners who as ALWAYS stand by our side,” Shea tweeted.

Police say the man was located around 12:45 a.m. Saturday in the Bronx and taken to a hospital for treatment and observation. Police did not specify what, if any, injuries or condition he was being treated for, as was reported by PBS.

PBS reported that a West Virginia sheriff’s department identified the man as Larry Kenton Griffin II, of Bruno, West Virginia and said he had a criminal history in the state.

The Logan County Sheriff’s Department said it has arrested Griffin, 26, at least three times in the past eight years, including a 2017 arrest on charges alleging he sent obscene material to a minor.

Police tracked Griffin down about 13 hours after releasing a flyer asking people to help them identify him. Social media posts from the department described him as a person of interest who was wanted for questioning. The Logan County Sheriff’s Department said it assisted an FBI task force by speaking with Griffin’s relatives in hopes of obtaining his possible location, according to the PBS report.

Griffin’s cousin Tara Brumfield told a Huntington, West Virginia, television station that he is a good person who has been dealing with mental health issues, according to published reports, 

Offering a possible explanation for his involvement with the rice cookers, she said Griffin has a habit of picking up items in one place and putting them down in another.

“Whether it’s tools or a fishing pole or something like that like he’ll pick up one thing and leave it there and then pick up another and then leave it there and I’ve watched him do stuff like that a bunch of times,” she told the station, 

It wasn’t immediately known if Griffin had a lawyer representing him in the New York case. No charges have been announced.

PBS reported that 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 2 miles away (3 kilometers) on a sidewalk in the Chelsea neighborhood, prompting another police investigation.

Police stressed at a news conference on Friday that it wasn’t clear if the man was trying to frighten people or merely throwing the objects away.

“I would stop very short of calling him a suspect,” said John Miller, the New York Police Department’s top counterterror official.

“It is possible that somebody put out a bunch of items in the trash today and this guy picked them up and then discarded them, or it’s possible that this was an intentional act.”