It was the wrong place at the wrong time for the two men who picked up an unattended backpack Sunday night in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The two still-identified men walked out of a restaurant, saw the backpack and thought it might be worth something so they picked it up and carried it away, according to a report from the New York Times.
“Thinking that it contained valuables, they had carried it perhaps 1,000 feet before becoming exhausted by its weight,” the New York Times reported Monday morning. “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.”
CBS New York reported that “two scavengers found the package while going through the trash. When pulling it apart, they found wires attached to the package. They then left the package under the train tracks and ran to a police station to report what they found.”
New Jersey.com reported that two men took it because it had looked “valuable.” They “walked for a bit, then saw wires and a pipe, dropped the package and notified Elizabeth police.”
Police arrived at the scene Sunday night and found five bombs in the backpack. One of the devices detonated early Monday morning as a bomb squad robot tried to disarm them. No injuries were reported.
It is still unclear if the explosive device that was found had any connection to the bomb that went off and injured 29 people on Saturday night in Chelsea. Nor was it clear the explosives had any connection to one that occurred in Seaside Park, New Jersey Saturday morning.
