Days before the Boston Marathon bombings Mykyta Panasenko of Jersey City, NJ carried homemade explosives aboard a NJ Transit train, which was bound from New York and was subsequently arrested on April 15th, the day of the Boston bombings.
However, unlike what happened in Boston, Panasenko told the New York Daily News that "the devices were fireworks." He also said that "he detonated them April 7 in the woods outside Suffern for fun."
The 27-year-old Panasenko was arrested and charged with possession of the destructive devices and creating a risk of widespread damage, Jersey City cops said Thursday, according to the New York Daily News.
He appeared in court Wednesday to hear and comprehend the charges against him. Officials said he was released on his own recognizance and a search of his home found explosive components but no completed devices.
"There is no indication at this point of the investigation that he intended to detonate a device in his building or on the transit system," Jersey City cops said in a press release, as reported by the New York Daily News.
Asked if officials in Boston investigating the Marathon bombing would have known about the explosives found in Jersey City, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller in Boston said this afternoon that "All incidents involving explosives are reviewed at the national level to determine if there is a linkage," stated NJ.com.
News of the arrest comes after reports that the Tsarnaev brothers, the two suspects in the Boston bombings, had also planned to set off bombs in Manhattan.
"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed on Thursday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told the FBI that he and his older brother Tamerlan intended to travel to New York from Boston on Friday- targeting the thousands of tourists and revelers in the city's Times Square," reported the Daily Mail.
According to Pansasenko's LinkedIn page, he attended Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and lists his current job as a mathematician at Mahwah-based High 5 Games, a game creator in the casino industry.
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