NEW YORK _ Ahmad Khan Rahami, a suspect in the weekend bombings in New York and New Jersey, had traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan several times in recent years, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the investigation.
Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan who was captured earlier Monday after a shootout with police, had married a Pakistani woman whom he brought with him to the U.S., investigators believe.
The woman left the U.S. for Pakistan in recent days and was intercepted by officials in the United Arab Emirates on Monday, the U.S. official said.
Officials do not know whether she was aware of Rahami's plans.
The shootout took place in Linden, N.J., a town next to Elizabeth, N.J., where Rahami lived with his family, Elizabeth Mayor Christian Bollwage said.
Rahami, 28, who worked at his family's fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, was in surgery Monday after being shot three times by police _ in the shoulder, the forearm and leg.
Two officers were also shot, one in the vest and one in the hand, Bollwage said. He did not have more details about their condition.
"They have apprehended him," Linden Mayor Derek Armstead said in a brief interview with a WABC-TV reporter. "He has been injured. They shot him."
WABC-TV video from a street in Linden showed a man resembling Rahami, strapped to a gurney and with blood on his right sleeve, being loaded into an ambulance. His eyes were open and he moved his head back and forth.
Investigators put out an unprecedented emergency alert to millions of cellphones Monday morning seeking information about Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan.
FBI agents and local police were tipped to Rahami's location by a bar owner who spotted the suspect slumbering in the vestibule of his business, a U.S. official said.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said after Rahami's arrest that authorities were not looking for any other suspects.
"There is no other individual that we are looking for at this time ... but vigilance is called for. It is very important that if anybody see an unattended package, they should call it in."
FBI officials said Rahami was not on terrorism watch lists. He had traveled back to Afghanistan a number of times in the last few years and was questioned upon his return each time, a U.S. official said. He raised no red flags, the official said.
There had been a domestic violence complaint that he had drawn a knife on his sister, but that complaint was withdrawn, officials said.
Federal agents identified Rahami using security footage from the Manhattan location where one bomb exploded and nearby, where an unexploded device was discovered, authorities said.
They also recovered at least one fingerprint from the unexploded bomb that they linked to Rahami, a U.S. law enforcement official said.
People trying to take the bag that held the second device may have accidentally disabled it, the official said. Security footage showed two men discovering the bag and opening it, then removing the pressure cooker bomb and leaving it on the sidewalk.
Five people _ either relatives or associates of Rahami _ were questioned in New York, the official said.
On Monday morning, police searched an apartment in Elizabeth where Rahami lived with his family, Bollwage said. They ran a restaurant on the ground floor, which opened in 2002. Ahmad Rahami was one of several sons of the owner, Mohammad Rahami.
The restaurant, First American Fried Chicken Restaurant, is part of a small commercial strip along Elmora Avenue. The restaurant has a big bright blue awning and photos of menu items plastered on the front window. Above the brick-fronted restaurant are two stories covered in beige vinyl siding, where officials said the family lived.
Residents and business owners expressed shock that the investigation into recent bombings had landed at their doorsteps.
Marcella Perrotti, 44, owner of the Short Cutz Unisex Salon, said the Rahami family members kept to themselves and did not mix with the close-knit group of shop owners.
"They didn't interact with us," Perotti said. "He didn't want to follow the rules. I guess he just had a problem doing that.
"It kind of angers you. Why would people come to this country to hurt us? And then to wake up and find out it happened, not just in your country, but across the street from you _ that's scary," Perrotti said.
Enoch Ojo, 26, who lives just down the block from the restaurant, said he often got food there but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
"His dad is a nice guy. They seem like regular people," Ojo said. "I'm just in disbelief that someone so dangerous could be living so close to us."
William Ferrera, 65, another neighbor, also frequented the restaurant occasionally. "It seemed like they were just hustling to make money. It didn't seem like they were up to anything," Ferrara said. "They just seemed like they were trying to make a living."
A 2005 bankruptcy filing said that the elder Rahami was separated from his wife and had eight children. Ahmad could usually be found in the back, cooking up the chicken and burgers, said a neighbor and local business owner, whose view of the father differed from that of the salon owner.
"The older man, the dad, was a very nice guy. He was a well-known figure in the community and people respected him," said Jonas Nunez, 58, who lives two doors away and runs a martial arts studio across the street. "Sometimes he would complain that he had to work seven days a week to support a large family."
The restaurant stayed open until 2 a.m., causing some complaints from the neighbors and frequent citations from the municipality, Nunez said. In 2011, family members sued the town, saying that they were being targeted as Muslims.
Neighbors had complained for years about noise and people hanging out in front of the restaurant, Bollwage, the town's mayor, told reporters in a briefing outside the restaurant Monday morning. In the lawsuit, the family accused the city of targeting them unfairly in their attempts to enforce a 10 p.m. closing time. The lawsuit ended in the city's favor in 2012, and the restaurant was ordered to close at 10 p.m.
"This had nothing to do with ethnicity or race," Bollwage said. "This had to do with a lot of people hanging out at all hours of the night as well as congregating and code enforcement problems."
"There were young kids who would hang out and play music. There were cars stopping by, people leaving clubs to get a bite to eat,'' said Nunez. "I wouldn't say that it was anti-Muslim. It was more anti-neighborhood noise."
The family members were known to be devout Muslims and would break off to pray in back of the shop. "He would say, time to go, I've got to pray," Nunez said, adding that the family was respected for their piety in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population, many of them Colombians, Ecuadorians and Dominicans.
Nunez said Ahmad and his brothers were all chubby, and that one of the younger boys, Mohammed, had been a kick-boxing student at his school across the street.
"They were nice kids, but you never know what poison the younger generation will fall prey to," said Nunez.
Investigators arrived in the neighborhood at about 4 a.m. Monday, surrounding the house and cordoning off the area. Helicopters circled overhead. Nunez said investigators were removing boxes from the house and had taken away three compact cars.
Seeking to reassure Americans unnerved by the spate of explosions and attacks over the weekend, President Barack Obama praised the "tough" and "resilient" response of New York and New Jersey residents, offering them as examples of how Americans should take terrorist threats in stride.
"Folks around here, they don't get scared," Obama said. "They go about their business every single day."
"That's the kind of strength that makes me so proud to be an American," Obama told reporters in a statement about the attacks ahead of meetings at the United Nations General Assembly.
"By showing those who want to do us harm that they will never beat us, by showing the entire world that as Americans we do not and never will give into fear, that's going to be the most important ingredient in us defeating those who would carry out terrorist acts against us."
Americans have to go about their lives without giving in to fear, Obama said. "We all have a role to play as citizens," he said.
The FBI has not yet determined the motivation for the attacks but have grown increasingly confident that the bombings were perpetrated by the same person or group of people, the U.S. law enforcement official said. The official noted that the devices in both shared common characteristics, such as flip phones for timing detonators and the same type of explosive, tannerite.
The FBI does not believe that a stabbing attack at a Minnesota mall on Saturday, which was later claimed by Islamic State, is connected to the bombings.
More bombs were discovered overnight in a backpack left in a train station in Elizabeth. Police robots accidentally detonated one of the five bombs inside the backpack but there were no injuries.
The new information led those who were initially cautious to suggest that these could be acts of international terrorism. "Today's information suggests it may be foreign-related, but we'll see where it goes," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday morning.
Investigators do not believe that the bomber or bombers received extensive training to make the relatively crude devices for several reasons. For one thing, the U.S. law enforcement official said, fewer than half of the devices exploded or partially exploded.
The official said the device that exploded in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night was placed inside a strong steel dumpster, which directed the blast upward. Twenty-nine people were slightly injured in the New York bombing.
The placement likely saved lives and reduced the severity and number of those injured in the blast. Someone trained in how to place explosives _ and not just learning how to craft them from the internet _ would not likely have chosen such a location, according Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer and a director of the Soufan Group, a New York-based security firm. Another bomb was discovered nearby before it could explode.
On Saturday, hours before the blast in Chelsea, there was another explosion near the boardwalk in the resort town of Seaside Heights, N.J., where a Marine Corps race was about to begin. There were no injuries reported.
