To neighbors and customers of his family’s storefront chicken takeout, Ahmad Khan Rahami was a friendly, quiet presence behind the counter who liked talking about cars and was generous with free food.
So when the 28-year-old Afghan immigrant was apprehended Monday as the lead person of interest in bombings in New York and New Jersey, those who knew him expressed shock, questioning whether his turn to religiosity in recent years might have hinted at views otherwise kept hidden.
Rahami’s father and brothers had long nursed tensions with neighbors and officials in Elizabeth, New Jersey, over the restaurant’s late hours, a conflict the family claimed in a lawsuit was the result of discrimination against them as Muslims.
But Ahmad Rahami’s demeanor – increasingly devout but more likely to talk about worldly pursuits than his faith – never hinted at anything but goodwill, customers said.
“He’d always talk about his cars. He loved his Civics, he loved going fast,” said Ryan McCann, a frequent customer at First American Fried Chicken, the restaurant that Rahami’s father, Mohammed Rahami, has run since 2002. “He was so friendly he’d give us free chicken here and there, just because we shopped there so much.”
Ahmad Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was taken into custody after a shootout with police in Linden, a nearby town.
A law enforcement official says fingerprints and surveillance video helped investigators identify him as the man suspected of setting off bombs in the New York area over the weekend. The official says he’s seen in surveillance footage “clear as day” at the scene of the Saturday night bombing in Manhattan.
The official says investigators recovered his fingerprints from the scene.
Rahami wasn’t on any terror or no-fly watch lists, a law enforcement official said, but he’d been interviewed by officials for immigration purposes.
Another law enforcement official says investigators pulled over a car carrying three men and two women “associated” with Rahami when it appeared headed toward an airport Sunday.
The officials spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the case.
As FBI agents removed bags of evidence from the restaurant Monday, officials and residents recalled Rahami and his family, who shared an apartment over the business.
Flee Jones, 27, who said he’d known Rahami since they were teenagers, told reporters he’d noticed a change in Rahami’s personality after a trip to Afghanistan in 2014. When Rahami returned, he “got more religious” and dressed differently than before, Jones said.
“He was more quiet and more mature,” Jones said. “I said, ‘Oh, where have you been?’ And he said, ‘Oh, vacation.’ But I knew he went to Afghanistan because his little brother said it.”
