EYED IN SUBWAY BOMB SCARE
Ditched rice cookers stir up panic
Country roads, take him home — forever!
A homeless West Virginia native caused rush-hour chaos in Manhattan on Friday when he left two rice cookers unattended in a downtown subway station, police sources said.
The NYPD Bomb Squad descended on the Fulton Street subway station at about 7 a.m. when authorities received a 911 call about two suspicious rice cookers left on the platform of the 2 and 3 lines and on a mezzanine.
Cops believe Larry Griffin II, 26, of Bruno, W. Va., is the man spotted on security video wheeling a shopping cart through the station before placing the appliances on the ground and leaving the scene.
Just over an hour later, a third rice cooker was found near a garbage can in Chelsea, but authorities are unsure if that one is connected to the others.
Because of the timing and location of the incident — a busy Manhattan subway station during peak hour — officers were investigating if the cookers were “hoax devices” meant to cause panic.
Police sources described Griffin as emotionally disturbed and homeless.
“I don’t know what the deliberate act is, whether it was to breed fear and alarm the public, or whether he was discarding items he was no longer interested in,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller told reporters.
“As you all know there are people with shopping carts who pick up things on the street who put things back down on the street, and that’s kind of a fact of urban life,” he said.
The Bomb Squad determined the empty rice cookers weren’t explosives at 9:40 a.m., but by then the scare had already snarled the morning commute.
Trains on the 2 and 3 lines were suspended, the Fulton Street subway station was evacuated and delays were reported on the 4, 5, A, C, J and Z lines.
Commuters in the station rushed for safety when they were told to evacuate.
“I’ve been through 9/11 so to me this is nothing,” said Tom, 60, declining to reveal his last name. “We ran. You kind of get used it if you work in Manhattan.”
Griffin has had brushes with the law before.
According to police in West Virginia, he was charged in 2017 for allegedly showing a video to a minor that involved him having sex with a chicken. That case is still pending.
“There is some type of deviant behavior there, obviously,” a West Virginia police source said. “In technical terms, there’s something that ain’t right with him.”
Griffin’s father, Larry, told The Post his son left town after he was charged — winding up panhandling and living on the streets — but the dad insisted his son was “a good kid.”
When told about the ricecooker bomb scare, the man maintained his son didn’t mean any harm.
“I worry about him all the time, but he’s not out to do nothing like that.”
As of Friday night, officers were still trying to locate the younger Griffin.
In 2016, a pressure-cooker bomb left by jihadist Ahmad Rahimi injured 30 people in Chelsea.