New Jersey Man Found Guilty in Chelsea Bombing
Source: New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON OCT. 16, 2017
A federal jury convicted Ahmad Khan Rahimi, a loner from New Jersey drawn to online calls to jihad, of setting the explosives in the Chelsea neighborhood that blew out windows and sent shrapnel flying into buildings, cars and people during a two-day bombing campaign in and around New York City last year.
The conviction on Monday, which carries a mandatory life sentence, came after dozens of F.B.I. agents, police bomb-squad detectives, computer analysts and technicians presented evidence over eight days. They had sorted through a blocklong field of debris on West 23rd Street and feeds from dozens of video cameras in the days after the Sept. 17, 2016 explosion, searching for clues.
Jurors also heard from those wounded that night by shrapnel from a bomb specifically designed to hurt people. No one was killed, a remarkable stroke of good fortune when the magnitude of the explosion became clearer. It blew out windows and doors and threw a heavy trash bin across a street six lanes wide. The mangled metal container was rolled out for inspection by jurors hearing the trial.
Mr. Rahimi carried multiple bombs — nine in all — but most did not explode. The first was set early that morning in a garbage can at the finish line of a United States Marine Corps charity race in Seaside Park, N.J. The race’s start time was delayed, however, and no one was hurt when the bomb exploded. That night, a blast occurred in Chelsea. A short time later, passers-by found a bomb on West 27th Street, which , was disarmed by the police bomb squad. The next day, Mr. Rahimi returned to New Jersey, leaving six pipe bombs in a backpack at an Elizabeth, N.J., train station. They carried fuses, not timers, and they did not explode until a bomb-squad robot detonated one later. Though no one was killed by Mr. Rahimi’s devices, because of a combination of bad luck and mistakes, the bombing spree left the region in fear for two days.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/nyregion/chelsea-bombing-verdict.html
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