A 25-year-old man accused of planning to attack a restaurant in upstate New York on New Year’s Eve has been arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State militant group, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday.
Emanuel L. Lutchman, claiming to have received direction from an alleged member of the group, also known as ISIS, wanted to target a restaurant in Rochester, New York, where he lives, according to a criminal complaint filed against him. He was arrested on Wednesday.
The complaint said Lutchman told a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they could plant a bomb inside the establishment and also kidnap and kill people.
“I will take a life. I don’t have a problem with that,” Lutchman said, according to the complaint, which noted that he planned to use knives during the attack.
The complaint described Lutchman as a “self-professed Muslim convert with a criminal history dating back to approximately 2006 … as well as previous state mental hygiene arrests.”
Lutchman appeared in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York on Thursday. The charge he faces carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The complaint said that in November and December Lutchman expressed support for Islamic State in telephone conversations with another paid informant for the FBI. It said he had been in contact this month with a person claiming to be a member of the Islamic State militant group in Syria.
On Tuesday, he went to a Walmart store in Rochester with one of the informants and bought two black ski masks, zip-tie fasteners, two knives, a machete, duct tape, ammonia and latex gloves for the planned attack, the complaint said.
He had no money and the informant paid about $40 for the supplies, it said.
Heavy security
Meanwhile in Times Square, more than a million people were expected to crowd together under heavy security to celebrate the arrival of 2016 with the traditional dropping of the New Year’s Eve crystal ball.
Throngs of people began streaming into the area early in the day, spending hours outdoors even before official festivities began with the lighting of the ball at 6 p.m.
With memories of the deadly attacks in Paris and California still fresh, police took extraordinary measures to ensure security at an event that has come to define the New York experience for many visitors to the largest U.S. city.
“This is the center of the world on New Year’s Eve,” said Rick Milley, 60, who traveled from Boston with his wife, Debbie, 59, to ring in the new year in Times Square.
“This was on our bucket list,” Debbie Milley said as the couple took pictures of themselves using a selfie stick.
The pair have spent the holiday in New York before but never in Times Square, the Midtown Manhattan crossroads that is a year-round tourist draw, filled with chain stores, family restaurants and flashy advertising displays.
About 6,000 uniformed and undercover police officers, 500 more than last year, were expected to be in the area on New Year’s Eve, with the help of mounted patrols, bomb-sniffing dogs, radiation detectors and other sophisticated technology.
“We have the capacity here to take a celebration like this and to make sure it’s exceedingly safe,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an interview with CNN. “You’ll see lots of police officers in regular uniforms and regular weaponry but you’ll also see the heavily armed officers.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has ranked the Times Square celebration as a level-2 concern on its five-point scale of security risks for major public events, a designation one step below the top-rated level-1 classification given Friday’s Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California.
Department officials have said they are unaware of any specific, credible threat to the Times Square gathering.
Penned for the party
The famous New Year’s Eve ball, which is 12 feet in diameter and weighs nearly 6 tons, descends on a pole mounted on top of One Times Square, a narrow wedge of a building along 42nd Street at the southern end of the square. The descent starts at exactly 11:59 p.m.
By early evening, crowds organized into neat pens formed by police barricades stretched for many blocks up Seventh Avenue and Broadway north of One Times Square. From a vantage point about 20 floors above, the revelers appeared to be tucked neatly into block-long honeycombs encircled by uniformed officers and support workers dressed in bright red coveralls.
Cheers reverberated through the area as images from the entertainment stages flashed on a giant screen mounted on the building just below the pole supporting the crystal ball. On occasion, fireworks exploded above, sending flashes of light and wafts of smoke through the square.
The normally bustling blocks south of 42nd Street were deserted, except for police and emergency vehicles.
“I always wanted to come here, but never took the chance,” said James Gomez, 39, of New Haven, Connecticut, as he surveyed the area with friends looking for a prime viewing spot.
Gomez came to Times Square even though he said he was concerned about the area being targeted in an attack.
“I’m scared,” he admitted.
In the hours before midnight, revelers like Gomez and his friends were to be treated to performances by musicians including Carrie Underwood and Jessie J performing on multiple stages set up in the area.
In addition, more than 100 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide were expected to watch the festivities on television.
The city for the first time was deploying its new Critical Response Command counterterrorism unit, which includes more heavily armed officers, to patrol Times Square.
The unit is trained to detect and respond to planned attacks, such those in Paris that killed 130 people on Nov. 13, or the rampage in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 were slain.
Before entering Times Square, visitors were required to pass through tight security checkpoints, with police stopping anyone from carrying backpacks and large bags into the area while searching smaller bags and scanning people with metal detectors.
Once inside the square and funneled into one of the dozens of viewing pens monitored by law enforcement, visitors were barred from leaving or re-entering those corrals until the end of the event.