NEW YORK CITY — The two Pennsylvania men charged with attempting to carry out, what authorities described as an ISIS-inspired attack in New York City, considered other targets before driving into Manhattan late Saturday morning with homemade bombs, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Investigators searching a storage unit in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi and 18-year-old Emir Balat are from, discovered a notebook in which the suspects wrote about soft targets like shopping centers, the sources said. No specific target was mentioned.
The NYPD said the teens brought improvised explosives to Gracie Mansion where an anti-Muslim protest clashed with a counter demonstration.
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The notebook and other evidence suggested Balat and Kayumi had been planning some kind of an attack for at least a week, the sources said.
Video ABC News obtained appeared to show one of the teens entering a fireworks store in Penndel, Pennsylvania on Monday, March 2, and making a purchase.
“The single item purchased was a 20 feet length of consumer fireworks safety fuse. The total spend was under $7,” Phantom Fireworks’ William Weimer said in an email to ABC News that identified the man in the video as Emir Balat.
The FBI carried out controlled detonations of devices in the storage unit that contained explosive residue.
Balat and Kayumi are being held on a terrorism charge, use of a weapon of mass destruction and other offenses. They have not yet entered a plea.
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