‘No Terrorism Nexus was Identified’: FBI Concludes Investigation of U.S. and Canada Border Car Explosion

The incident — reported Wednesday as a potential act of terrorism — caused border closures ahead of Thanksgiving and a media firestorm.

Derek Gee/The Buffalo News via AP
Law enforcement personnel block off the entrance to the Rainbow Bridge, Wednesday, November 22, 2023, at Niagara Falls, New York. Derek Gee/The Buffalo News via AP

Updated 09:25 EST November 23

After closing down multiple border checkpoints on one of the busiest travel days on the American calendar, the FBI says it has concluded its investigation into an explosion at Rainbow Bridge, a U.S. and Canada border crossing.

“A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified,” the FBI Buffalo field office said. “The matter has been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation.”

Governor Hochul said “there is no indication of terrorist involvement in the incident on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls at this time.”

FBI agents spent Wednesday afternoon and evening investigating after a car erupted into a fireball at the border checkpoint  n New York. 

A car explosion at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing “was likely caused by a reckless driver,” sources close to the matter told Reuters following the incdient. Earlier reports from Fox News said that “high-level police sources” told Fox the “explosion was an attempted terrorist attack.” 

The incident killed two passengers Wednesday and injured a Border Patrol agent, in an explosion that eyewitnesses describe looked like a “ball of fire.”

Reports from a “senior law enforcement official” quoted by the New York Times indicate the incident involved a car that was “speeding from the U.S. side toward Canada.”

Governor Hochul had directed the New York State Police to work “with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to monitor all points of entry to New York” and traveled to Buffalo to meet with law enforcement.

Eyewitnesses described fire and smoke at the scene. 

“The car was coming flying back here, going over 100 miles an hour, we could hardly see him, he was going that quick,” a Canadian eyewitness, Mike Guenther, told WGRZ, a Buffalo NBC affiliate.

“There was a car in front of him, he swerved around it, then it looked like he hit the fence,” he says. “The fire started, then all of a sudden, he went up in the air, and then it was a ball of fire like 30, 40 feet high. I’ve never seen anything like it.”


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