Four Port Authority Police Officers have been hailed as heroes after taking down the Bangladeshi man US authorities say set off a homemade pipe bomb in a crowded New York City commuter hub on Monday.
Officers Sean Gallagher 26, a former Marine, Anthony Manfredini, 28, a former Marine bomb tech, Drew Preston, 36, a former Army soldier with three combat tours, and Jack Collins 45, an attorney, have been identified as the cops who took Akayed Ullah into custody.
It was Officer Manferdini who spotted people running out of the passageway and he was swiftly joined by his colleagues as they ran towards the explosion and witnessed 27-year-old Ullah, crumpled on the floor, trying to get to his cellphone.
These are the four Port Authority police officers who arrested NYC terror attack suspect: (from left to right) Officers Sean Gallagher 26; Drew Preston 36; Jack Collins, 45; Anthony Manfredini, 28
Akayed Ullah, a resident of Brooklyn, was taken into custody after the attack. He says he wanted to carry out the terrorist attack in retribution for Muslim Palestinians. Ullah is seen here being taken to the hospital
Many improvised explosive devices often use cellphones as the detonator, so he may have been trying to set off the second explosive that was found on his body.
‘The person on the floor was reaching for his cell phone. The officers at that point had to make a decision so no one else would be hurt and they decided at that point to take the person into custody,’ Bobby Egbert, spokesman for the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told 1010 WINS.
He added: ‘There was a struggle with him, they had to keep him from reaching the cell phone, obviously they had no idea what he was going to do with the cell phone.’
The officers received praise from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders following the incident.
‘These brave first responders and others who rushed to the scene are heroes,’ she said.
It was Officer Manferdini who spotted people running out of the passageway and he was swiftly joined by his colleagues as they ran towards the explosion and witnessed 27-year-old Ullah, crumpled on the floor, trying to get to his cellphone
Ullah, who had a homemade bomb strapped to his body, set off an explosion in an underground pedestrian corridor between New York’s Times Square and the Port Authority Bus Terminal at rush hour, injuring himself and three others in what New York Mayor Bill de Blasio called an attempted terrorist attack.
A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said investigators have found evidence that Ullah had watched Islamic State propaganda on the internet.
Bangladesh strongly condemned the attack in a statement saying, ‘A terrorist is a terrorist irrespective of his or her ethnicity or religion, and must be brought to justice.’
Officials in Bangladesh are trying to track down the extended family and any known associates of Ullah.
Firefighters, police officers and FBI agents converged on the area of the attack near Times Square Monday morning around 7:30am – causing rush hour chaos for many New Yorkers
‘Police are looking for his family, but so far they’ve not been able to trace them,’ said Abul Khair Nadim, the Chair of Musapur Union council, a local government body in the Chittagong division in southern Bangladesh, where Ullah’s family originally lived.
Bangladesh’s police chief told Reuters late on Monday that 27-year-old Ullah had no criminal record in his home country, which he last visited in September.
Ullah lived with his mother, sister and two brothers in Brooklyn and was a green card holder, said Shameem Ahsan, consul general of Bangladesh in New York.
Ahmad Ullah, a relative of Ullah, who Reuters tracked down on Tuesday, said his cousin’s father had moved to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka with his family many years ago.
He said Ullah’s father had passed away about five years ago, and that Ullah had been through a normal public school education in Bangladesh before moving to the United States.