Tesla with a strange device on the trunk led to a commotion in Queens

At about 7:30 am on January 4, the New York City emergency services were called. A car was stopped in the middle of a ramp in the parking lot of Queens Place Mall in Queens, coming out of smoke. On the trunk was a fuel can with wires attached to it. The callers decided that it might be an explosive device, writes The New York Times.

Within minutes, New York City police and firefighters arrived and began evacuating the mall and nearby shops and streets. They assumed that Tesla's electric car with Nevada license plates was mined.

By 11:30 am, the police determined that the strange construction of canister, wires and cans on the trunk was not an explosive device.

Hours later, law enforcement officials said investigators were looking for a 22-year-old man with right-wing extremist views, who was arrested twice last week on charges that he burned posters outside the Gracie Mansion (residence of the mayor of New York).

At about 3 am on Tuesday, wanted man Louis Schenker surrendered to police.

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Schenker is well known to police and federal agents for his aggression against officers and protesters at demonstrations against police brutality last year, and for his social media attack on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Schenker also had his own podcast, The Minuteman, in which he expressed his far-right views, police said. Among other things, he threatened to carry out a civil arrest for de Blasio and stated that he intends to travel to Georgia to try to disrupt the second round of elections that would determine control of the US Senate.

Police are also looking for the second person seen in the car with Schenker earlier Monday.

The police stressed that the sappers mistook the device on the trunk for a real bomb, calling it a "hoax device."

Police patrolling the area first spotted Schenker and another man in the parking lot around 5 a.m. Monday. Two men told the police that their car had broken down. After a short conversation, the officers left.

But police returned to the parking lot after a 911 caller reported that a suspicious-looking car was blocking the ramp.

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When they arrived, they found Schenker and the other man gone, the car windows blocked with cardboard, and a canister on the trunk surrounded by wires and cords.

They also found a husky sitting quietly in the back seat of the car.

While the police neutralized the device, helicopters circled over the shopping center, officials blocked and redirected traffic on the streets, and more than 20 emergency vehicles were parked near the mall. Dozens of police officers and firefighters gathered outside a shopping center and parking lot.

Customers and employees of the shopping center waited outside for more than two hours after the evacuation until the sappers determined that the device was not a threat.

Several handwritten notes were found inside the car, but the police did not specify their content.