Cops evacuated a string of posh Brooklyn Heights brownstones yesterday after a cache of weapons – including pipe bombs, sniper rifles and crossbows with arrows – was found in a duplex shared by an ex-con and a prominent AIDS researcher from Columbia University.
A bloodied Ivaylo Ivanov, 31, approached officers at about 1:15 a.m. around the corner from 58 Remsen St., where he lives with his roommate, who is often overseas for work, police sources said.
Ivanov told the cops he had been shot in the hand by a stranger, and he was taken to Long Island College Hospital.
There, he changed his story and admitted he shot himself – apparently while cleaning one of his guns, the sources said.
When cops searched his fourth-floor apartment, they found six pipe bombs, sniper rifles, a handgun, shotguns, a crossbow with arrows, silencers, bomb-making equipment and other weapons – prompting an immediate evacuation of the building and others on the historic, tree-lined block.
Ivanov was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and falsely reporting an incident.
He was questioned by the joint FBI-NYPD terrorism task force.
“That would be standard for this type of situation,” said NYPD Assistant Chief Michael Collins.
Neighbors in the building said Ivanov shares the unit with Dr. Michael C. Clatts, 50, a pioneer AIDS researcher.
Clatts, an assistant professor at Columbia, is conducting AIDS research in Vietnam for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Investigators want to talk to him about Ivanov and find out whether he knew that the weapons were in the tony pad.
Ivanov has five prior arrests for petit larceny.
Local residents said he would spin colorful tales about his past, including that he is of Russian and Bulgarian descent, a former army sniper who served in Bosnia.
He has been on the NYPD’s radar at least since September, when he became a suspect in a slew of hate crimes in the area that included swastikas painted on synagogues and cars.
After his arrest, he told cops he was working for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, the sources said.
“They are both what I would consider eccentric people,” Penny Kaufman, who lives on the second floor, said of the roommates.
Additional reporting by Eric Lenkowitz and Elizabeth Lippman