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Long Island authorities are working with the FBI to track down the person who detonated an unknown explosive on an uninhabited island off the Long Isl
Long Island authorities are working with the FBI to track down the person who detonated an unknown explosive on an uninhabited island off the Long Island Sound, and are concerned it may be a prelude to a potential terror attack.
Suffolk County Police Acting Commissioner Stuart Cameron said the Suffolk County Police Department, on the eastern half of Long Island, received about 30 calls about the explosion on Fox Island that happened at around 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Nassau County police, to the west, also said they had received 911 calls about people reeling from the blast at their homes and businesses.
The explosion left a 4-feet-wide, 2-feet-deep crater on the north side of the uninhabited island off the coast of Babylon on Long Island’s South Shore, and officials say they are now searching for the person responsible.
They are asking for any information about a 23-foot-long boat with stripes seen fleeing the area around the time of the explosion.
The explosion left a 4-foot-wide, 2-foot-deep crater on the north side of Fox Island
Suffolk County police are asking for any information about this striped boat seen fleeing the area around the time of the explosion on Sunday morning
Suffolk County Police received about 30 calls about the explosion that happened at around 11am on Sunday. Authorities are pictured on the scene of the uninhabited island
Fox Island is described as being ‘off the beaten path’ and is only reachable by boat
‘Obviously our department is concerned as to why someone would detonate a device on an uninhabited island,’ Cameron said at a news conference on Monday, according to Newsday. ‘So we definitely want to find out who did it.’
He later added: ‘We do know that when people produce homemade explosives, very often they want to test those explosives to make sure they function as intended, so that is one of our concerns, and that is why we want to determine what transpired yesterday morning.’
A spokeswoman for the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement to Fox News ‘terrorism is always a concern because people do test devices before using them.’
A spokeswoman also told DailyMail.com that possible terrorism ties is ‘part of the investigation.’
She confirmed that the department is now working alongside the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate the incident.
Officials say the explosion could have been caused by anything from a pipe bomb to dynamite, CBS News reported, though Cameron said police ‘didn’t find any fragmentation that would indicate it was a low explosive, pipe bomb-type device.’
Still, he said, police are now ‘investigating the potential cause and origin of the explosion.’
Acting Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron said authorities did not ‘find any fragmentation that would indicate it was a low explosive, pipe bomb-type device,’ but are investigating all the possibilities
At the news conference on Monday, officials described the aftermath of the explosion on the island that is only accessible by boat.
Clammers in the area had told Suffolk County Police Marine Bureau officers that they saw sand rise from Fox Island off Bergen Point, on the southern end of Babylon, and posts on VolcanoDiscovery.com – a website dedicated to reports of earthquakes and seismic activity – revealed it was felt in Smithtown, about 20 miles away.
One resident wrote that their ‘house shook,’ and they ‘heard what sounded like a boom,’ describing it as ‘almost like a large tree falling next to my home that made my house shake – but it wasn’t a tree.’
And a Lindenhurst resident, about 10 miles away from the island, wrote: ‘I was positive … [something] hit the car in the driveway into the house or hit our house.’
In Babylon, just north of the island, Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer said Monday he heard the explosion from his home about a quarter mile away.
He also said that Babylon Public Safety officials were overwhelmed with about 500 calls about the blast on Fox Island, where duck hunters and recreational boaters sometimes stop.
Lindenhurst Mayor Michael Lavorata also described the island as ‘off the beaten path,’ and admitted at the news conference that he ‘never even heard of it before yesterday.’
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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