PHILADELPHIA (AP/ KYW Newsradio) — Two teens from Bucks County were taken into custody after they allegedly threw improvised explosives into a crowd of anti-Islam protesters outside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence.
Far-right influencer Jake Lang was holding an anti-Islam protest outside the mayor's mansion on Saturday during Ramadan, while the mayor and his wife, who are Muslim, were inside.
The sparsely attended event drew a far larger group of counterdemonstrators, including one person who tossed a smoking object containing nuts, bolts, screws and a “hobby fuse” into the crowd, police said.
In a social media post, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department’s bomb squad determined the object wasn’t a hoax device or smoke bomb, but an “improvised explosive device that could have caused serious injury or death.”
The device extinguished itself steps from police officers, Tisch noted.
According to KYW Newsradio’s news partner NBC10, 18-year-old Emir Balat, of Langhorne, was the one who threw that IED (improvised explosive device). He is a student in the Neshaminy School District.
After throwing the first device, Tisch said Balat ran to grab another one from 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, of Newtown Township.
The second device was dropped and did not appear to ignite, the commissioner said.
Both men were arrested at the scene. Charges are still pending.
Tisch said police were working with federal prosecutors and the FBI on the case. The FBI said agents with the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force were participating in the investigation.
“I can confirm this morning that this is being investigated as an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” Tisch added. “At this time, we do not have any information that connects this investigation to what’s going on overseas in Iran.”
“Violence at a protest is never acceptable,” Mamdani said in a statement Sunday. “The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”
A person associated with Lang’s protest was also arrested and charged with reckless endangerment, assault and unlawful possession of a noxious matter after allegedly macing counterdemonstrators, police said.
Lang was previously charged with assaulting an officer with a baseball bat, civil disorder and other crimes before receiving clemency as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping act of clemency for Jan. 6 defendants last year. He recently announced that he is running for U.S. Senate in Florida.
Earlier this year, Lang organized a rally in Minneapolis in support of Trump’s immigration crackdown, drawing an angry crowd of counterprotesters that quickly chased him away.