How two teenagers from wealthy Pennsylvania suburbs became suspects in an attempted ‘ISIS-inspired’ attack in New York City

BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. — Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi have a lot in common: They are both teenagers. They are both first generation Americans. Both live on tree-lined streets in the affluent suburbs of North Philadelphia.

“There’s nothing crazy going on in this area,” said Logan Lombardi, who went to high school with Kayumi.

However, for all their similarities, authorities say the only known connection between the two men is what they did together last Saturday: attempting what investigators describe as an ISIS-inspired attack by throwing explosive devices at a protest outside the residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Federal prosecutors say Balat, 18, and Kayumi, 19, drove to Manhattan from Pennsylvania on the morning of March 7, parking a few blocks from Gracie Mansion before slipping into a crowd that included participants in an anti-Islam protest and a group of counterprotesters. The two men were arrested after Balat threw two jars filled with explosive materials at protesters and law enforcement, according to prosecutors.

None of the devices exploded and no one was injured. Balat and Kayumi are being held on several federal charges, including attempting to support the Islamic State, after prosecutors said the two men made statements about the terrorist group.

Body camera video from New York City officers who arrested Kayumi shows him responding “ISIS” to someone in the crowd asking him why he did it, according to a federal complaint.

After waiving his Miranda rights, prosecutors said, Balat pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and told authorities he hoped to inflict more carnage than the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which left three people dead and more than 260 others injured.

Lawyers for Balat and Kayumi did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Balat’s lawyer, Mehdi Essmidi, told NBC News on Monday that Balat had “complicated things” and suggested his client did not know Kayumi before Saturday.

“They don’t know each other,” he said.

Classmates remember a quiet, independent student

Although authorities have not said how the teens knew each other, the two grew up about 4 miles from each other in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Kayumi lives in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on a street lined with 4,000-square-foot brick homes and manicured lawns. His parents emigrated from Afghanistan and became U.S. citizens in 2004 and 2009, according to CBS News.

On Thursday, no one answered the door, even though a Mercedes was parked in the driveway. Neighbors a few houses away told NBC News they didn’t know Kayumi or her family well and mostly kept to themselves.

Kayumi enrolled part-time at nearby Bucks County Community College in September 2024, according to a college spokesperson.

Earlier that year, he graduated from Council Rock High School North, which has a soccer field and track, a dozen newly paved tennis courts and a student parking lot filled with luxury cars. The students said the area was not known for the violence prosecutors now allege.

“The high school and the town, the people are pretty wealthy,” said former classmate Connor McCormick. “There’s not really a lot of controversy.”

The high school said in a statement that “there is no evidence that he posed a threat to Council Rock schools” and encouraged affected students to consult with their school counselors.

Another former classmate, Matt — who asked that his last name not be published for fear of retaliation — said he and Kayumi were in smaller classes for children with learning disabilities.

Matt said that although he and Kayumi saw each other a lot, their conversations were usually brief and one-sided.

“He was definitely very quiet,” Matt said. “He wouldn’t talk unless you tried to talk to him, you know what I mean? He wouldn’t say a word.”

Matt said that although Kayumi was not regularly bullied, he was sometimes a target.

“He wasn’t really violent, but if someone said something to him, like disrespect him or something, he wasn’t afraid to respond,” Matt said.

Matt and Lombardi recalled that Kayumi had been involved in at least one physical altercation at school. The two former classmates did not witness the fight and do not remember who else was involved or who instigated it. They said they remembered the altercation because physical violence at their high school was “very rare.” A school representative declined to comment on Kayumi’s student records.

Lombardi, 19, said he used to sit next to Kayumi on the bus to and from school almost every day during their sophomore year. He described Kayumi as “independent”, but not as someone who avoided conversation.

“There were no telltale signs if we compare it to what just happened,” Lombardi said. “It would in no way have been my first guess.”

Lombardi said that although they spoke often during their sophomore year, Kayumi was not on his list of people to say goodbye to when high school ended.

It’s not immediately clear what Kayumi has been up to since leaving high school and starting community college. A university spokesperson said Kayumi left the school on March 9.

Kayumi’s mother filed a missing person’s report for her son on March 7, saying she last saw her son around 10:30 a.m., two hours before his arrest, according to the complaint.

“If he’s going to be five minutes late, he calls,” Kayumi’s father told the New York Times in an interview.

Teenagers allegedly traveled to New York with explosive materials

Balat grew up 4 miles south of Kayumi, on a tree-lined street similar to Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

His father, Selahattin Balat, immigrated to the United States from Turkey and became a citizen in 2017, according to a lawsuit he filed against the Department of Homeland Security over his 2015 citizenship application.

On Thursday, a man who identified himself as Balat’s father opened the front door of the family’s palatial home and declined to comment.

Balat is a senior at Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, according to a school spokesperson. The spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that Balat has been completing his senior year remotely since September.

When asked for comment on last week’s incident, the Neshaminy School District shared two letters from the district’s superintendent to parents and staff, including one indicating there was no information indicating concerns about Balat related to the school.

The New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Balat had been selling designer sneakers at a premium, sometimes for hundreds of dollars, in a Wawa parking lot since he was 13. He was also selling products on Facebook Marketplace just 19 days before the New York incident.

One of Balat’s neighbors, who asked NBC News not to publish her name for fear of retaliation, described the family as “loving,” “open,” “welcoming” and “caring.”

She said she hadn’t spoken much with Balat in recent years, but that he seemed like a “typical kid.” Balat shoveled his driveway during a snowstorm a few years ago.

“It doesn’t surprise me because that’s the world we live in right now,” she said. “But it surprises me that it’s here.”

On March 2, Balat purchased a fireworks fuse from Phantom Fireworks in Langhorne. Surveillance video shared with NBC News shows him arriving at the company’s Penndel location around 12:15 p.m., registering his identification with an employee — a step the company requires of all customers — and purchasing a single 20-foot roll of green safety fuse with cash.

Phantom Fireworks Executive Vice President Alan Zoldan said the company searched its records for names of suspects after the attempted bombing and found a match for Balat, leading employees to the roughly 10-minute tour of the store that was filmed. Zoldan also showed NBC News a copy of a subpoena he said federal prosecutors sent to the company.

Five days later, prosecutors say, Kayumi and Balat drove from Pennsylvania to New York in a black Honda registered to one of Balat’s family members, crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan around 11:36 a.m. Eastern Time.

Around 12:15 p.m. ET, Balat threw an explosive device toward the area where protesters gathered at an anti-Islam rally outside the mayor’s official residence on the Upper East Side, according to officials. The rally was led by conservative provocateur Jake Lang and attracted fewer than two dozen protesters and more than 120 counterprotesters, according to authorities.

Shortly after, Kayumi handed a second explosive device to Balat, who dropped it near the officers before the two men were arrested, according to the complaint.

After waiving his Miranda rights, according to the complaint, Kayumi said he “was affiliated with ISIS; that he watched ISIS propaganda on his phone; and that he was partly inspired to carry out his actions that day by ISIS.”

Investigators recovered a notebook from the car Balat and Kayumi were driving that contained handwritten notes referencing “materials that could be used to make explosive devices,” according to the complaint.

Authorities also removed “explosive residue” from a Pennsylvania storage unit believed to be linked to the incident. A senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told NBC News that local police detonated some components out of an abundance of caution Monday evening.

Investigators are still trying to determine how Balat and Kayumi met and what led them to plan the attack.

For Matt, it has been difficult to reconcile the classmate he remembers with the allegations against him.

“We just thought he was a normal kid, like all of us, pretty much,” Matt said. “We were all shocked.”