Bomb explodes as the robot attempts to disarm it at Train Station In Elizabeth

Early Monday morning 5 explosive devices were found at a train station in Elizabeth, NJ, one of which detonated as local police and the FBI were attempting to disarm it with a robot. The explosion was caught on video. Thankfully there were no injuries. But the individuals who found the suspicious backpack in the first place could have been seriously hurt. (Or maybe we should thank them?) From the New York Times: The men who initially found the backpack were not suspects, the mayor said. Thinking that it contained valuables, they had carried it perhaps 1,000 feet before becoming exhausted by its weight. They set it down where their muscles gave out, beside an S.U.V. under the New Jersey Transit overpass on Broad Street at the station downtown, the mayor said. It’s also not known if the train station was the actual target: Law enforcement officials were examining surveillance video from the cameras of the bar near where the backpack was found.

The mayor said that the area had been searched and that no other such packages had been found. [Mayor J. Christian] Bollwage said he did not think that Elizabeth had necessarily been targeted by an attacker. “It is very possible that someone was trying to get rid of a package, as opposed to setting it off,” he said. All trains through the area were halted as the FBI continued its investigation. Service should be restored by the morning commute. It is not known if there’s a connection to the people taken into custody Sunday night on the Belt Parkway in NYC.