BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Police said they had made an arrest Saturday morning of a homeless man in connection with Friday’s incidents where two rice cookers were left in the Fulton St. subway station and another one was left in Chelsea.
Larry Griffin, 26, originally from West Virginia, was collared in a Bronx apartment after police responded to a call for “an apparent overdose,” the New York Post reported. A second man was also taken into custody there, the Post said.
Police said Griffin was charged with three counts of placing a false bomb in the second degree.
One rice cooker was left on the platform of the 2 and 3 lines at the Fulton St. station in Lower Manhattan and another was left on the mezzanine level. Police were notified by a 911 call of the cookers around 7 a.m. As the Bomb Squad responded, straphangers were sent scrambling and the morning commute was snarled.
A third rice cooker was found about an hour later in Chelsea, at W. 16th St. and Seventh Ave., reportedly near a garbage can.
Police determined all three devices were safe. As they were searching for the suspect, cops released photos of Griffin in the Fulton St. station with a shopping cart allegedly containing one of the cookers.
According to news reports, he has previous arrests in West Virginia for drug and weapons possession and also for showing a sexual video to a minor.
The Post reported that the video “involved him having sex with a chicken.”
The tabloid quoted a West Virginia police source saying, “There is some type of deviant behavior there, obviously. In technical terms, there’s something that ain’t right with him.”
Police are still investigating, but Griffin reportedly has a reputation for picking things up off the street and then leaving them elsewhere, according to the Post.
Three years ago, a pressure cooker bomb that was left by an Islamic terrorist in Chelsea on W. 23rd St. between Sixth and Seventh Aves. exploded, injuring 31 people. A second similar undetonated device was found four blocks away.
In 2013, two pressure bombs placed by Islamic terrorists near the finish line of the Boston Marathon detonated, killing three people and injuring more than 250 others.
