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An explosion left behind a mysterious crater on an uninhabited Suffolk County island over the weekend, police said.
Dozens of 911 calls poured in around 11 a.m. Sunday, reporting a loud noise heard across the South Shore, Suffolk County cops said.
Marine Bureau officers found a crater, 4 feet wide by 2 feet deep, on the north side of Fox Island off the coast of the town of Babylon around 11:40 a.m., authorities said.
The crater appeared to have been created when a device was intentionally detonated, authorities said. No one was hurt.
Clammers in the area told officers they saw sand rise on Fox Island, cops said.
The device was not a pipe bomb because no shrapnel was found, police said. It also left behind more sand displacement than an M80 would cause, authorities said.
The incident does not appear to have been an accident, according to police.
“We do know that when people produce homemade explosives, very often they want to test those explosives to make sure they function as intended,” acting Suffolk County Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron said at a Monday press conference. “So that is one of our concerns, and that is why we want to determine what transpired [Sunday] morning.”
Suffolk County Police released a photo of a striped vessel that was seen leaving the area at the time of the detonation.
The boat appeared to have “two, maybe three young people” on board, Babylon Supervisor Rich Schaffer told WCBS-TV.
Authorities said that terrorism is “always a concern, but not the key focus” of the investigation.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is also investigating the explosion, according to police.
“I’m hoping we can chalk this up to knuckleheads that did something that just went way out of control and they’re lucky that they’re still alive,” Schaffer told FOX 5.
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