To the extent that Emir Balat was known at all in the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, it was as a budding entrepreneur.
When he was only 13, he programmed bots to buy pricey sneakers the moment they dropped. His father would drive him to the parking lot of a Wawa convenience store, where he would sell them to a sneaker dealer, sometimes making more than $200 a pair. He told people he was investing in crypto.
Last fall, Mr. Balat started attending high school remotely and began selling contractor supplies online — flooring, sinks and vanities, mini-splits and power tools. Customers gave him rave reviews.
But by mid-February, Mr. Balat suddenly stopped listing items for sale. Soon, prosecutors say, he started planning something darker. On a chilly afternoon in early March, security cameras at a fireworks store a couple of miles from his home captured him pulling into the parking lot in a black Honda with New Jersey plates. He bought 20 feet of slow-burning fuse, prosecutors said.
Five days later, the authorities say, Mr. Balat, 18, and another man who lived near him drove a black Honda over the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. They parked a few blocks from Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, where an anti-Muslim protest was getting underway on March 7.
Mr. Balat, the police say, took a jar packed with metal and a powerful explosive, lit the fuse and threw the device at protesters. He and the other man, Ibrahim Nikk Kayumi, 19, were immediately arrested. The bomb never exploded, and no one was injured.
At the station house, both said they were inspired by ISIS, the terror group also known as the Islamic State, according to the police. They said they were defending Islam from being defamed by the right-wing influencer who led the protest outside the residence of Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, the police said. “This isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet,” Mr. Balat told the police. “We take action!”
They were charged with attempting to support the Islamic State and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. A lawyer for Mr. Balat declined to comment on Wednesday about his client, and a lawyer for Mr. Kayumi could not be reached for comment.
On Monday, as Mr. Balat and Mr. Kayumi remained in a federal detention center in Brooklyn, the authorities searched a self-storage facility in Langhorne, Pa., Mr. Balat’s hometown. The F.B.I. said it found explosive residue in a unit linked to one of the young men. Monday night, bomb technicians “conducted a controlled detonation” of what they found.
Garry Pozdnyakov, the former sneaker seller who bought shoes from Mr. Balat, recalled him as smart, quiet and businesslike. “Our interactions were pretty simple,” he said. “I would text him what I needed. He would text me the size list of shoes or clothing that he would acquire and we would meet at the Wawa.”
On limited-edition runs, Mr. Balat sometimes cleared $200 or $300 a pair, Mr. Pozdnyakov, 25, said. Mr. Balat told Mr. Pozdnyakov he was investing his earnings in stocks and crypto. “You’d think a kid making some money would buy video games or something like that, but he was smarter and ahead of the game,” Mr. Pozdnyakov said.
In 2024, Mr. Balat told Mr. Pozdnyakov he was getting out of the sneaker business because the profits weren’t there anymore. “Nike started mass releasing, and instead of making $50 he was making $10 to $20 a pair,” Mr. Pozdnyakov said.
By September 2025, Mr. Balat was doing business on a Facebook group called Bucks County Exchange. His banner was a quote from the Quran about fixing a wicked society.
Over the course of six months, Mr. Balat posted more than 60 listings. “Serious buyers only,” he wrote on a $230 brushless screw gun in November. In December: “Need gone ASAP — Cheap Attic Insulation!” In early February, he listed a Disney Princess Style Fresh Prep Gourmet Kitchen for $70. He had a 4.9 star rating. “Emir was a great seller, very honest and upfront,” one customer wrote. “Brand new product, quick pickup, awesome price!” wrote another. His last postings were on Feb. 16: an ice-fishing auger and a hedge trimmer.
No signs of radicalization have emerged in any of these online interactions. But for any young person, getting access to propaganda and videos that instruct people on how to commit terror attacks has never been easier, according to experts.
While ISIS has diminished in size and power in the past decade, its influence online is far-reaching, according to Benjamin Voce-Gardner, the director of the counterterrorism office in the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. It went from controlling large parts of the Middle East and ordering attacks like the one in Paris in 2015, to posting videos and propaganda that speak to people with grievances.
Groups like ISIS, he said, “have figured out that good recruiting grounds are places like Discord and Roblox and the video game apps.”
“You’ve got individuals online who are probably more proactive, who will get in the chat rooms, talk to people, encourage them, tell them what to do, tell them how to do it,” Mr. Voce-Gardner added. “There are others who are out there just creating propaganda and pushing it out there and hoping that it finds a willing audience.”
In a video filmed by an artist, Isabelle Brourman, who was at the protest on Saturday, as Mr. Kayumi is being held in handcuffs behind a police car, a protester carrying an American flag asks him who directed the bombing attempt — the Muslim Brotherhood? George Soros? Yemeni Houthis?
Mr. Kayumi glances toward him and says “ISIS.”
A law enforcement official said on Wednesday that agents and detectives have just begun to review material seized from Mr. Bilat and Mr. Kayumi’s electronic devices and in physical searches as they work to delve deeper into their histories and motivations.
Phantom Fireworks, owners of the store near Mr. Balat’s house that he visited on March 2, said that it had turned over its security footage of him to the F.B.I.
The company, which has nearly 100 stores nationwide, requires all customers to register and keeps a database of every transaction they make. William Weimer, Phantom’s vice president and general counsel, said that Mr. Balat bought the fuse on March 2 for $6.89.
“That was the sole purchase he ever made from us.”
Kyle Bagenstose, John Leland, Jonah E. Bromwich and William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Andy Newman writes about New Yorkers facing difficult situations, including homelessness, poverty and mental illness. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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