NEW YORK CITY \u2014 New York City police said on Sunday a device that was ignited and thrown during protests outside \u200bMayor Zohran Mamdani’s home over the weekend was an explosive that could have caused serious injury or death.<\/p>\n
The device, a jar filled with nuts, bolts and screws \u200cand wrapped in black tape with a fuse, was thrown by a counterprotester on Saturday outside Gracie Mansion, but it \u2060extinguished itself before any explosion, according to \u200ba statement from New York City police \u2060Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Two people were in custody, Tisch said.<\/p>\n
The device was one of two \u200cthat were thrown during \u200cthe protests, which were led by two opposing groups, according to police. The \u2060second device was still being examined, Tisch said.<\/p>\n
Far-right activist \u2060Jake Lang led a protest on Saturday outside Gracie Mansion \u2014 where Mamdani lives with his wife \u2014 against a purported Islamic “takeover” of New York City and against public prayer by Muslims. Tisch said at a press conference on Saturday that she did not believe Mamdani and his wife were home at the time.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Sunday, Mamdani condemned \u200cLang’s protest but said the violence that followed it was \u200bmore disturbing.<\/p>\n
“Violence at a protest is never acceptable,” Mamdani said. “The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”<\/p>\n
Lang’s protest, which consisted of about 20 people, was opposed by a far larger counterprotest of 125 people aimed at running “Nazis” out of New York, Tisch said at a press conference on Saturday. Police said Emir Balat, 18, was among \u200bthe counterprotesters before he lit and threw the device.<\/p>\n
The device rolled near police before it extinguished itself, Tisch \u200csaid on Saturday. \u200cBalat ran after \u2060throwing it and eventually lit and dropped a second device in the street, according to Tisch.<\/p>\n
Balat and another man, whom police on Sunday identified as Ibrahim Kayumi, were arrested at the scene, Tisch said. New York police are working with the FBI and the U.S. Department of \u200cJustice on the investigation.<\/p>\n
Tisch said \u200bon Saturday there was no immediate indication the incident \u200cwas related to the \u2060U.S. attack on Iran, \u200bbut that authorities were still investigating.<\/p>\n
\n The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK CITY \u2014 New York City police said on Sunday a device that was ignited and thrown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8141,8140,303,2419,3415,2710,610,9,11,10,12,87,7178,8142,319,2556,2023,1844,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-157561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-classifieds","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-homes","12":"tag-jobs","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-local","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-radio","21":"tag-salt-lake","22":"tag-sports","23":"tag-television","24":"tag-traffic","25":"tag-utah","26":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}