One of the Bucks teens charged in the alleged attack outside NYC Mayor Mamdani’s residence bought fuse from a fireworks shop days earlier

One of the teens charged with attempting to ignite homemade bombs outside Gracie Mansion in New York City this weekend bought a roll of fuse from a Bucks County fireworks shop days before the attack, according to an executive from the company.

Emir Balat, 18, visited the Phantom Fireworks store in Penndel on March 2 and spent $6.89 on a 20-foot roll of slow-burning fuse, said Bill Weimer, the company’s vice president and general counsel.

Weimer called it a “totally unremarkable purchase,” and said the fuse Balat bought is so small in diameter that it can be extinguished using two fingers.

Still, once police this week identified Balat, of Langhorne, as a defendant in what they described as a thwarted terrorist attack — and charged him alongside another local teen, Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, of Newtown — Weimer said officials at Phantom Fireworks searched for any potential purchases that either man might’ve made at one of their stores.

That’s when company officials found evidence of Balat’s visit to the Penndel store earlier this month, Weimer said — five days before the Gracie Mansion incident. They also recovered surveillance video appearing to show Balat make the purchase, said Weimer, who added that it was the only transaction either teen made at any of the company’s shops.

Officials at Phantom then alerted the FBI, Weimer said, “and next thing we know, we got a subpoena to produce” the records.

It was not immediately clear if the fuse Balat bought was used in Saturday’s attempted bombing. Weimer said he didn’t know, and he said the FBI did not tell him or others at the company whether agents had learned the answer to that question.

An FBI spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did Balat’s attorney.

Still, the development came shortly after the FBI said it had conducted controlled detonations of explosive materials found in a Middletown Township storage facility. And it raised additional questions about how much advanced planning Balat and Kayumi may have done before they allegedly lobbed homemade explosives toward anti-Islamic protesters in Manhattan on Saturday — actions police said the men professed to have undertaken in support of ISIS.

The incident in New York unfolded Saturday afternoon, authorities said, after the men had traveled to the city in a car registered to one of Balat’s family members.

It was not clear how Balat, a senior at Neshaminy High School, and Kayumi, a 2024 graduate of Council Rock North High School, may have known each other, or for how long. But authorities said they were among more than 100 people who assembled in opposition to a far-right, anti-Muslim protest that was taking place outside the residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim.

As tensions between the two sides flared, police said, Balat threw a fiery device toward the protesters, then ran down the block and got a second device from Kayumi.

Neither device exploded, police said, but FBI tests later revealed that one of them contained TATP, a highly volatile explosive often used in terrorist attacks.

Balat and Kayumi were taken into custody at the scene, police said, at which point both men separately professed allegiance to the Islamic State.

Authorities, meanwhile, conducted controlled detonations of both devices, and said they could have caused “death and destruction” had they ignited on the street.

Balat and Kayumi have each since been charged in New York with federal crimes including use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to support a foreign terrorist organization. They remain in jail without bail.