HELL’S KITCHEN — A New Jersey man was arrested after Port Authority police found a bag containing a possible “flash bang grenade” at a deli inside the bus terminal, a spokesman for the agency said.
Police officers responding to a report of a suspicious package found the bag on a chair at a Deli Plus inside the bus terminal on Eighth Avenue around 5:18 p.m. on Wednesday, the spokesman and a complaint filed with the Manhattan District Attorney's office said.
After K-9 units cleared the bag, officers opened it and discovered a knife, bolt cutters, screwdrivers and “a possible improvised explosive device later identified as a possible ‘flash bang grenade,’” he said.
The NYPD Bomb Squad removed the device from the terminal for “further analysis," and heat was later applied to the device to detonate it, the spokesman and the DA's office said.
Three hours later, around 8 p.m., officers saw Jersey City resident Arsenio Mason, 39, return to the deli to get the bag, the spokesman said.
"I'm looking for my briefcase, I left it over there," Mason told a Port Authority officer, pointing to the chair where the bag had been, the complaint said.
Officers detained him for questioning and found a pipe with methamphetamine residue in his right jacket pocket, the spokesman and the DA's office said.
"Sorry, it's a meth pipe," Mason said, according to the complaint.
Mason was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a controlled substance, the complaint said.
He's currently being held at the Manhattan Detention Complex on $500,000 bail and is expected to appear in court on March 21, according to the DA's office and city Department of Correction records.
His attorney couldn't immediately be reached for comment Thursday.
