Man suspected in NY subway scare in custody

NEW YORK — The man who appeared in a widely circulated surveillance photo and was sought in connection with the rice cookers bomb scare in lower Manhattan on Friday was taken into custody Saturday, officials said.

The man, who was not identified by police, was taken into custody, Terence Monahan, the New York Police Department’s chief of department, confirmed on Twitter.

Department officials said the man was found in the Bronx and had been hospitalized, but it was not clear why.

No charges have been filed, and a motive for the placement of the cookers remained unknown, authorities said.

A local sheriff’s office in West Virginia said it had been contacted by law-enforcement officials and identified the person the police were searching for as Larry K. Griffin II, 25, a former resident of Bruno, West Virginia, which is in the southern part of the state close to the Kentucky border.

The episode began about 7 a.m. Friday, when authorities were alerted to two suspicious appliances at New York’s Fulton Street subway station. An hour later, police were alerted to a third suspicious device near a garbage can in the Chelsea neighborhood.

Around 10 a.m., officials announced that all three devices were empty rice cookers and were not dangerous.

Griffin was seen on video leaving two devices on the subway platform at the Fulton Street station, authorities said. It was unclear whether he placed the third device. All three were the same model rice cooker.

John Miller, the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said officials did not know why Griffin had placed the rice cookers in the subway. He said they could have been trash “and this guy picked them up and discarded them.”

The news release from the sheriff’s office in West Virginia said Griffin had been arrested at least three times in the past eight years.

Around 5 p.m. Friday, Griffin called his brother, Jason Griffin, in Connecticut, and said he was scared and unsure of what to do because police were searching for him.

Larry Griffin, who moved to New York from West Virginia in May, has a history of mental illness and had been living on the streets, his brother said.

“He thinks being homeless is fun,” Jason Griffin said. “He was collecting stuff, and he said that he found three rice cookers in front of a sushi restaurant.”