Victim who was temporarily blinded testifies at accused Chelsea bomber’s trial

Gripping testimony from an architect who was blinded with blood oozing from her right eye in the aftermath of the Chelsea bombing last year led off the prosecution of Ahmad Khan Rahimi in Manhattan federal court Monday for allegedly bringing terrorism to the center of New York City.

Speaking in a crisp British accent, Helena Ayeh told jurors she was walking on W. 23d Street on the way back from a shopping trip on the evening of Sept. 17 when she saw a “flash,” heard a “deafening noise” and felt her body slammed by the impact of a bomb detonating.

“I felt myself thrust upward and forward,” she said, landing on her knees and wrists, her white dress covered in blood and unable to see from her right eye. A 100-pound dumpster where the bomb had been placed landed in a hunk of twisted metal just a few feet away.

Later, in an ambulance, Ayeh twice asked a paramedic if her eye was still there, and was met with silence. When the medic finally answered yes, Ayeh asked the medic if she was sure and why she had hesitated so long to answer.

“Do you believe in God?” the medic responded, Ayeh testified. “I said yes. She said, ‘Pray.’”

Ayeh said that her eye was bleeding from a deep cut from shrapnel, but she didn’t lose her eyeball and eventually recovered her vision.

Rahimi, 29, an Afghani-American from Elizabeth, N.J. who worked in his family’s fried chicken restaurant, is accused of planting two homemade pressure-cooker bombs in the Chelsea neighborhood, one of which exploded on W. 23d and injured 30 people, and another that didn’t detonate on W. 27th St.

He is separately charged in New Jersey for bombs there and a police shootout, and in opening arguments Monday prosecutors told the jury of 8 men and four women that his violent outburst was fueled by jihadist sentiments recorded in a notebook that would be put into evidence.

“He believed he was a soldier in a holy war against Americans and New York and New Jersey were his battlegrounds,” prosecutor Shawn Crowley said.

In addition to Ayeh, the government kicked off its case with other victims such as Vicki Fereia, a handicapped woman living in a third-floor apartment on W. 23d St. whose Saturday evening watching TV with her family ended in panic as a “boom” shattered the windows.

“They’re going to kill us! Someone’s trying to kill us! Go down to the floor!” her husband shouted as Fereia and her children dove to the ground. Fereia said she had undergone seven months of counseling.

Jurors also heard from Jane Schreibman, who rushed from her apartment on W. 27th St. over to the site of the bombing only to rush past a pressure cooker with wires sticking out of it next to a mailbox, and then return home to call the police, who contained and removed it.

“I thought it was just a family that had cleaned out their loft and this was just a child’s experiment,” she said. “But it stuck in my mind, because I knew it was a pressure cooker and people make bombs with pressure cookers.”

The trial got off to a rocky start Monday morning when Rahimi rose just as Crowley began her opening statement and tried to talk to U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who ordered him to sit and then, as jurors looked on, ordered court officers to escort him out.

Berman later sent the jury out and brought Rahimi back in. His lawyer said she misled him into believing he could speak before the trial started. Rahimi was allowed to stay after he apologized and explained he wanted to speak to Berman about being denied visits with his wife and children.

“I never intended to interrupt the court proceedings,” Rahimi said. “ . . . This was the last resort.”

In addition to victims, prosecutors introduced footage from security cameras showing a man — they say it was Rahimi — wheeling suitcases onto W. 23d and then W. 27th, where two men noticed it, removed the pressure cooker, left it on the sidewalk and took the suitcase.

Rahimi’s defense team asked few questions and offered no substantive defense in their opening statement, using it to remind jurors of the government’s burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. “He is at the end of the day . . . a person who is presumed to be innocent,” said defense lawyer Meghan Gilligan.