This Was Found In The Chelsea Pressure Cooker

After a frightening couple of instances on Saturday, Americans all over the country are wondering what was inside the Chelsea pressure cookers. That evening, two explosive devices were found in different but nearby locations within the New York City neighborhood. One had exploded inside of a dumpster, injuring 29 people. Authorities and media outlets are reporting that the devices were loaded with debris of some kind, just like in earlier instances of domestic terrorism.

Barbara Demick, Vera Haller, and Brian Bennett at the Los Angeles Times noted that the devices may have born similarities to those used in the 2013 Boston bombings; those devices were reportedly composed of Christmas lights, ball bearings, and a cellphone.

News outlets like the New York Post claimed that the inside of the pressure cookers contained "debris," mentioning that over a dozen individuals suffered injuries when the shrapnel was unexpectedly launched through the air. The device that exploded was located on West 23rd Street.

A similar unexploded device was found on West 27th Street in the same Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made a statement regarding the incident during a news conference:

A bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism. A bomb going off is generically a terrorist activity. That's how we'll consider it. And that's how we will prosecute it.

However, the pipe bomb that went off in Seaside Heights, New Jersey earlier that day was apparently of a different type of construction. Katherine Lam at PIX11 News reported that the device was taken to the NYPD's firing range in the Bronx for disposal.

Jane Schreibman, a local photographer who noticed the second device and alerted authorities commented on the unexploded device. "It was a funny-looking object, like a child's science experiment, and I thought, 'Why would somebody have thrown this out here?' But then again, you see a lot of junk on the streets in New York," Schreibman told the LA Times reporters.

The Boston Marathon bombings in 2013 carried out by the Tsarnaev Brothers used pressure cooker bombs with bits of hardware and ball bearings embedded inside the device in order to inflict maximum amount of damage. Three people were killed in that attack, and over 260 were injured as the improvised explosive devices went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Sadly, this isn't a new innovation, though security has been amped up as a result.