Person of interest in rice cooker subway scare in custody

The West Virginia man accused of being behind the Lower Manhattan rice cooker subway scare has been charged with three counts of placing a false bomb, cops said Saturday.

Larry Griffin II was taken into custody around 1 a.m. Saturday in The Bronx, where police also took a shopping cart into evidence, cell phone video shows.

Responders were originally called to the apartment on Rev. James A. Polite Ave. near Dawson Street for an apparent overdose, officials and sources said. Medics took the man to Lincoln Hospital along with a second victim, officials said.

The Friday morning chaos sent the morning rush into a scramble when someone left two rice cookers in the Fulton Street station around 7 a.m., prompting NYPD to shut down the station and evacuate the area.

Police later determined the objects were not explosives, authorities said.

A cousin of Griffin said the man is known to pick up random objects and leave them in different spots.

��Little Larry’s a good person. He’s got issues, but he don’t ever mean no harm or anything,” Tara Brumfield told WSAZ in West Virginia.

“Whether it’s tools or a fishing pole or something like that like he’ll pick up one thing and leave it there and then pick up another and then leave it there and I’ve watched him do stuff like that a bunch of times.”

During the investigation, cops tweeted photos of Griffin, who police sources described as emotionally disturbed and homeless.

According to West Virginia police, Griffin was charged in 2017 for sending bestiality videos involving a chicken to a minor.

But Griffin’s father told The Post he didn’t believe his son meant to cause harm.

“He’s a good kid,” he said. “I worry about him all the time but he’s not out to do nothing like that.”

“He’ s not a terrorist,” neighbor Isidore De La Rosa, 58, said of Griffin. “The only thing that’s weird is, why leave one pot here, one pot there? That’s the only question I have for him.”