Credit: NYPD
When a homemade explosive device landed on the pavement near a crowd of protesters by Gracie Mansion in New York City, NYPD Sgt. Luis Navarro didn’t stop to calculate what to do next. He ran toward the device.
“I didn’t have time to process anything,” said Navarro, an 11-year veteran of the force. “I saw the device hit the floor and I just ran. I knew that I needed to save lives.”
Navarro and Chief of Patrol Borough Manhattan North Aaron Edwards spoke to reporters last week to tell their version of the Saturday, March 7, incident where they handled what authorities described as an “ISIS-inspired” terror attack.
Two Bucks County men — 18-year-old Emir Balat, of Middletown Township, and 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, of Newtown Township — are accused of targeting a contentious anti-Muslim protest and counterprotest with improvised explosives.
The NYPD response was captured in a viral video that showed Edwards vaulting over a steel police barrier to tackle Balat just as the teen prepared to throw a second device.
“At that point, it was all instinct,” said Edwards, who has served 22 years with the NYPD. “There wasn’t a lot of thought. There was a real threat … the goal was just to get to it and just take care of business.”
Investigators said Balat and Kayumi had been radicalized in support of ISIS.
Balat allegedly told authorities he intended to surpass the carnage of the Boston Marathon bombing using devices filled with explosive powder.
While the devices were thrown, they failed to detonate.
For Edwards, the moment he cleared the barrier remains a blur.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t remember doing it,” he said. “I was trying to alert other officers to give me a hand so we can get them.”
While the image of the leap has drawn comparisons to a superhero movie, Edwards said he hopes the photo serves as a different kind of symbol.
“I want that picture to be a reminder to New Yorkers that your cops, the members of the NYPD, we’re going to be relentless in pursuing justice,” Edwards said. “And there’s going to be no obstacles.”
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The day had begun as a routine demonstration.
Edwards said he expected the two groups to “go at each other a little bit,” but nothing on the scale of a terrorist plot.
Navarro credited his response to his six months in the police academy and years of counterterrorism and active shooter drills.
“Everything that I’ve learned in my whole career culminated to that one moment,” Navarro said.
The sergeant said that while the city is always on high alert, “to actually see it, feel it, hear it, it’s completely different than anything that I’ve ever experienced.”
The gravity of the failed attack set in about two hours later, when the two officers sat down to talk.
“It really hits you that this is a lot more serious than we may have even initially thought,” Edwards said.
The two men followed very different paths to the NYPD, they told reporters.
Edwards was a college student during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Watching first responders rush into the towers inspired him to join the force.
Navarro, who was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in Washington Heights and the Bronx, took the police exam on a whim when he went with a friend.
After the incident and the attention on it, the NYPD’s officers and internal support team has been helpful to the two heros.
“The good thing is we have such a great support system in NYPD,” Edwards said. “We check in all the time with each other.”
