Someone knew what the Chelsea bomber was planning, Sen. Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
“To me, it seems likely that other people knew, given how open he was about this and he exploded a bomb in his backyard,” the New York Senator said. “But [investigators] haven’t come to a conclusion.”
Police are still trying to piece together the timeline of what drove Ahmad Rahami to plant numerous bombs in New Jersey and New York last weekend.
“They are checking everything. They’re looking carefully at Rahami’s family,” Schumer said.
He also clarified that authorities are confident Rahami was the sole suspect in the string of bombs planted at West 23rd Street, West 27th Street, the New Jersey Transit stop in Elizabeth and in a dumpster along a 5K route in Seaside Park.
But Schumer doesn’t think Rahami was encouraged by ISIS to carry out the attacks, which included setting off a pressure-cooker bomb in Chelsea last Saturday that injured 29 people.
“Might he have been influenced by foreign terrorists? Yes. He might have been, but they have no evidence that he was urged to do this specific act at this specific time in any way,” Schumer said.
The 28-year-old bomber was arrested last Monday following a brief shootout with cops in Linden, New Jersey.
He has not spoken to police since he was taken into custody, which Schumer said is also due in part to his lengthy recovery that has him “in and out of consciousness.”
He was shot in the shoulder by one of the three responding officers who discovered him passed out in front of a bar.