Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old suspect in the bombings in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend, was taken into custody after a shootout with police in Linden, N. J., on Monday morning, officials said. Two police officers were wounded during Rahami’s arrest, but their injuries were not thought to be serious.
ABC’s New York affiliate captured images of the Rahami as he was taken away from the scene in an ambulance. He appeared to have been shot in the right arm.
Here is everything we know about Rahami so far:
• Rahami, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen of Afghan descent, was born on January 23, 1988, in Afghanistan.
• His last known address was in Elizabeth, N.J., where five explosive devices were found at a train station on Sunday night.
• Rahami was being sought in connection with an explosion in Seaside Park, N.J., on Saturday morning and the blast that injured 29 people on West 23rd Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night.
• Rahami’s family runs a restaurant in Elizabeth, First American Fried Chicken, where he and his brothers also worked.
• Rahami’s father traveled to Pakistan in the summer of 2011, according to court records reviewed by Yahoo News.
• The Rahami family had filed a lawsuit that year accusing the City of Elizabeth of illegally shutting down the family’s restaurant because of complaints from local residents who were biased against Muslims.
• Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage told reporters that he had fielded noise complaints about the restaurant, which was open 24 hours a day, and that family had taken the city to court to try and keep those hours. But the court ruled in the city’s favor, passing an ordinance in 2012 that forced the restaurant to close at 10 p.m., Bollwage said.
• Court records in the case show that the lawyer for the Rahami family, Shelley Stangler, asked the judge for a postponement of a settlement conference in the case in July 2011 because her client was in Pakistan.
• Stangler said she had been unable to “meet or speak” with her client because “I am advised that he is in Pakistan,” Stangler wrote in the July 19, 2011, letter. “He was supposed to return by July 14, 2011, but is apparently is [sic] having trouble getting an available plane seat and ticket back to the United States.”
• The letter provides no further information about the purpose of Mohammed Rahami’s trip or whether other members of his family accompanied him.
Ryan McCann, a patron who frequented the restaurant, described the younger Rahami as “a very friendly guy” who gave him free chicken on occasion.
“All he talked about was his cars,” McCann said. “About his fast Honda Civics.”
“I would’ve never suspected this,” McCann added.
Earlier Monday, the FBI released a bulletin seeking the public’s help in locating Rahami.
The New Jersey State Police released additional photos of Rahami Monday morning.
“We want to get this guy in for questioning,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on CNN earlier Monday. “I think we’re going to know a lot more in the course of the day. Things are moving very quickly.”
Investigators are trying to determine whether Rahami acted alone.
On Sunday night, FBI agents in Brooklyn stopped “a vehicle of interest” in the investigation of the Manhattan explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.
According to the Associated Press, five people in the car were being questioned at an FBI building in Manhattan. They have not yet been charged.
While authorities said initially there did not appear to be a connection between the explosions and international terrorism, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday he “wouldn’t be surprised if we found a foreign connection to the act.”
But at a press conference Monday afternoon, William F. Sweeney, assistant director for the FBI’s New York City field office, said there “no indication” that a terror cell is “operating here.”
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