Students Arrested in Bomb Plot Hoax

Police have arrested two college students for placing five fake bombs around the city's subway system as a hoax.

Officials said none of the packages – including backpacks, duffel bags, and a plastic tube used to transport documents – contained hazardous material. Robert Barrett, 21, of Angola, N.Y., and Jaime Davis, 21, of Allentown, Pa., were each charged with five counts of placing a false bomb, police said.

Police said the satchels were discovered September 28 between noon and 3 p.m., the day police allege they were planted.

Subway passengers and transit workers reported the bags inside subway cars and various stations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, police sources said. At least one was reported in Penn Station. Filler in the bags, including New York Post newspapers, helped investigators trace them to their owners this week, police sources said.

Those familiar with the investigation said the Pratt Institute students deposited bags marked with the words "If you see something, say something" in order to mock the subway system's antiterror initiatives.

Their plot consisted of placing the hoax bags around the city, photographing them, and then submitting the snapshots as part of an art project aimed at proving the city's inability to detect terror plots.

School officials, who were not aware of the students' illegal activities, were not implicated in the hoax, police said.