NYPD seeks person of interest in rice cooker discoveries in subway, on street

The NYPD is searching for a man who appears to have discarded at least two rice cookers in a lower Manhattan subway station, sparking fears of explosives among morning rush-hour riders of the nation's busiest transit system, officials said Friday.

A cooker was found a short time later on the street near 16th Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, officials said. None of the cookers was a bomb.

Surveillance video from the downtown scene — at the Fulton Street Station in the Financial District — shows that each "hoax device" was left on the station platform by a man in his 20s or 30s with dark hair, according to the NYPD's John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. The man was wheeling a shopping cart, Miller said. 

“We need to identify the individual and talk to him,” said Miller, who described him as "a person of interest" and not necessarily a criminal suspect, noting that it is possible he was simply discarding items he didn't want anymore. 

The cookers were all the same make and model, Miller said.

"Nothing of danger has been found, and there's no indication of any further activity," Mayor Bill de Blasio said in his weekly public radio interview on station WNYC. "They did not pose a danger. What the motivation was, that's not yet determined." 

"The NYPD's working on it right now," he said. "So they have information that hopefully will turn into a specific name and then an arrest — which is typically the pattern we go through."

The authorities used both "rice cookers" and "pressure cookers" interchangeably early in the morning. Det. Michael DeBonis, an NYPD spokesman, said the department believes the devices are rice cookers.

Both rice and pressure cookers can do damage, but a pressure cooker is considerably more dangerous when used as a bomb, said Van Romero, a physicist and vice president for research at New Mexico Tech.

Used for ill intent, the cooker can be packed with gunpowder or another incendiary chemical, sealed and set off by remote. The pressure would turn the metal into shrapnel, with the potential for death and injury to many, as happened at the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, he said.

That bombing, involving pressure cookers, killed three spectators and wounded 260 others.  

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in a WCBS radio interview Friday, said that while the devices found at the Fulton Street Station contained no wires, they may have been placed on the subway platform to create fear. 

The investigation prompted the station to be evacuated, snarling the morning commute.

During the investigation, the streets around the station were blocked off, and the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J and Z lines bypassed Fulton Street in both directions.

Shortly before 10 a.m., service in both directions on the 2 and 3 lines resumed while still bypassing Fulton Street; the 4, 5, A, C, J and Z had resumed stopping there.

By early afternoon, 2 and 3 trains again were stopping at the station, though police had taped off where the cookers were discovered. 

Thomas Hyland, a retired NYPD detective and now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said a cooker can be more difficult than other bombs to defuse.

"There's only one way into it, and it's through the top," Hyland said, and the cooker can be rigged to explode when the top comes off. 

Said Hyland: "It's an easy device to scare the hell out of people."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com,matthew.chayes@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert,

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.