Car Bomb Found In Times Square!
 

May 2, 2010, 3:56 a.m. EDT



Car bomb in NY's Times Sq. prompts police to evacuate area


By MarketWatch
TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Times Square in Manhattan, one of New York's top tourist areas, was evacuated Saturday night by the police after they found a car bomb at West 45th Street and 7th Avenue, media reports say.
The bomb did not explode and no one was injured. The police used a robot to check the car, reports say.

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/MW...0502034325.jpg Reuters
A NYPD officer in a bomb suit examines a Nissan Pathfinder SUV parked in New York's Times Square May 1, 2010.

Around 6:30 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, a mounted police officer reported a black Nissan Pathfinder had smoke coming out of it, the reports said.
The vehicle contained propane tanks, powder, gasoline and a clock attached to wires, a Police Department spokesman told The New York Times.
The spokesman told the paper that no one was in custody and the police had no motive as yet. He said the police were checking security cameras, investigating reports that someone had been seen running from the car.
At a news conference early Sunday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said investigators believed that the car's owner had nothing to do with the bomb, The Wall Street Journal reported. The paper quoted the mayor as saying "there's no more danger here than in any other city."
The Associated Press reported that President Barack Obama was being briefed on the investigation. A White House statement said Obama ordered his homeland-security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to advise New York officials that the U.S. government would provide support if necessary.

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Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

I saw that.

Seems like the bad stuff always happens in Yew York City!

^ Also Louisiana, huh?



And how about Haiti?

A reminder of how easily something dastardly could be made to happen in our midst. Thankfully this one didn't turn into something horrifying.

We've been pretty lucky. Plus I picked an excellent day to be out of town! http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ilies/cool.png

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Times Square Bomb Investigation [UPDATE: 'It Appears To Be A Car Bomb,' Police Say]

TOM HAYS and DEEPTI HAJELA | 05/ 2/10 04:43 PM | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/images/v/ap_wire.png
NEW YORK — Police investigating the failed car bomb left in Times Square have videotape of a possible suspect shedding clothing in an alley and putting it in a bag and found a substance that resembled fertilizer in the parked SUV, Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Sunday.
Kelly said officers were on the way to a Pennsylvania town to talk to a tourist who might have recorded the suspect on his video camera. The video shows a white man in his 40s taking off one shirt, revealing another underneath.
The commissioner said there's no evidence that a Pakistani Taliban videotaped claim to the failed car bombing is valid.
Police found the SUV parked on one of the prime blocks for Broadway shows such as "The Lion King" on Saturday night. Thousands of tourists were cleared from the area for 10 hours. The bomb was dismantled, and no one was hurt.
The SUV contained three barbecue-grill-sized propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components, police said. Timers were connected to a 16-ounce can filled with the fireworks, which were apparently intended to set the gas cans and propane afire, Kelly said.
"Clearly it was the intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, to create casualties," Kelly said at a news conference at police headquarters. "It's just a sober reminder that New York is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm."
He said New Yorkers are lucky that the bomb did not fully detonate because it "looks like it would have caused a significant fireball." He said the vehicle would have been "cut in half" by an explosion and people nearby could have been sprayed by shrapnel and killed.
"It wasn't an accident," he said. "It was somebody who brought this to the location to send a message to terrorize people in the area."
Police also found eight bags of an unknown substance in a gun locker that was in the smoking SUV, Kelly said. The substance "looks and feels" like fertilizer, he said, but tests were pending.
Kelly said surveillance video shows the vehicle entering the area at 6:28 p.m. Saturday, and a vendor pointed the SUV out to an officer about two minutes later, at the height of dinner hour before theatergoers head to Saturday night shows. He said the license plate on the SUV belongs to a car that is being repaired in Connecticut.
Duane Jackson, a 58-year-old handbag vendor from Buchanan, N.Y., said he noticed the car and wondered who had left it there.
"That was my first thought: Who sat this car here?" Jackson said Sunday.
Jackson said he looked in the car and saw keys in the ignition with 19 or 20 keys on a ring. He said he alerted a passing mounted police officer.
They were looking in the car "when the smoke started coming out and then we heard the little pop pop pop like firecrackers going out and that's when everybody scattered and ran back," he said.
"Now that I saw the propane tanks and the gasoline, what if that would have ignited?" Jackson said. "I'm less than 8 feet away from the car. We dodged a bullet here."
After the Connecticut license plates on the vehicle did not match up, police interviewed the Connecticut car owner, who told them he had sent the plates to a nearby junkyard, Bloomberg said.
Heavily armed police and emergency vehicles shut down the city's busiest streets, choked with taxis and people on one of the first summer-like days of the year. Times Square lies about four traffic-choked miles north of where terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, then laid waste to it on Sept. 11, 2001.
___
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Cristian Salazar, Michael Kuchwara and AP Radio correspondent Julie Walker in New York, AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier, AP writers Eileen Sullivan, Pete Yost and Kimberly Dozier in Washington, Colleen Long in North Carolina and Robert H. Reid in Kabul.

If the bomb maker was competent, this could have been very bad.

Speculation is that this may have been by a local Muslim group that was mad about a recent South Park episode.

Speculation shmeckulation.

It's also being said that it's a complete ruse / set-up to garner more of our tax payer dollars for Homeland Security efforts.

Similarly, a certain President supposedly blew up the oil well in the Gulf all by his self.

And that a Presidential spouse performed some voodoo rain dance in the Red Room causing massive flooding in Tennessee.

Let's wait for the facts.

I heard it was a protest against gladiator sandals.

I would think it more likely to be a group in our own country pissed at Obama AND the muslim religion in general (not that the two have any direct link) and figuring that setting a bomb off in TS would do two things:

1. Kill "liberals".
2. Make people scared and blame the Muslims, thus validating more military action both home and abroad.


There may be many other reasons, but this smelled more like a Timothy McVeigh (sp) than a suicide type bombing. (I am talking in its motivation and basic implimentation, not its plan of attack...).


BTW, did anyone else find it ironic to see the man in the bomb suit standing in front of a rack of "I

The New York surveillance video, made public late Sunday, shows an unidentified white man apparently in his 40s slipping down an alley and taking off his shirt, revealing another underneath. In the same clip, he's seen looking back in the direction of the smoking vehicle and furtively putting the first shirt in a bag. Police hoped to interview the tourist who took the video. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_560592.html

I saw that vid ^

Looked to me more like some guy leaving work on a very hot evening and pausing to take off a top shirt, revealing a t-shirt underneath.

No doubt they'll track him down and the facts will emerge.

I HOPE the facts will emerge.

If they don't, an innocent may pay for a failed attempt at chaos and destruction, and we will be none the safer because of it.

Suspect arrested in NYC bomb attempt

Man is a Connecticut resident who bought the SUV at center of probe


BREAKING NEWS
msnbc.com news services
updated 4 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Authorities arrested a suspect in the attempted weekend car bombing in Times Square, NBC News' justice correspondent Pete Williams reported early Tuesday morning.
A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, Shahzad Faisal, was arrested Monday night in Long Island, Williams reported.
Earlier, an official told The Associated Press that the potential suspect recently traveled to Pakistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case was at a sensitive stage.
The officials said the man was a Connecticut resident who paid cash weeks ago for the SUV parked in Times Square on Saturday and rigged with a crude propane-and-gasoline bomb. NBC's Williams reported the man's name was on an e-mail that was sent to the seller of the car last month, as well as other evidence suggesting he had a role in the attempted bombing.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported on Monday that an FBI-led terrorism task force has taken over the investigation of the failed car bombing in Times Square because of indications it was connected to international terrorism, a senior law enforcement source said.
The probe had been overseen by the New York Police Department. Responsibility for it shifted to a Joint Terrorism Task Force as Obama administration officials said the incident increasingly appears to have been coordinated by more than one person in a plot with international links, the Post reported on its Web site.
The White House, according to the Post, intensified its focus on the failed bombing Saturday in New York City, in which explosives inside a Nissan Pathfinder were set ablaze but failed to detonate at the busy corner of Broadway and 45th Street. Emerging from a series of briefings, several officials told the Post it was too early to rule out any motive but said the sweeping investigation was turning up new clues.
Sold for cash
A law enforcement official says the registered owner of the SUV used in the botched bombing told investigators he sold it for cash three weeks ago.
The official told The Associated Press that the Connecticut owner questioned Sunday about what happened to the SUV says he sold the vehicle to a stranger.
Officials continued to look into the history of the vehicle as one way to crack the case. The vehicle identification number had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine and axle, and investigators used it to find the owner of record.
Investigators tracked the license plates to a used auto parts shop in Stratford, Conn., where they discovered the plates were connected to a different vehicle.
They also spoke to the owner of an auto sales shop in nearby Bridgeport because a sticker on the Pathfinder indicated the SUV had been sold by his dealership. Owner Tom Manis said there was no match between the identification number the officers showed him and any vehicle he sold.

The suspect, a Pakistan man, was caught and apprehended. He was traced through an e-mail.

He almost made it out of the country. He was on a plane at JFK Int'l Airport that was headed over to Dubi.

The plane had already left the gate and was headed over to the runway when it was summoned back to the gate, or stopped on the taramac.

He was arrested, taken off the plane and is in custody. Sick basterd!! Wonder if he's from that sick al Quaeda network.

Meanwhile, and as usual, more crap to friggen go through at the airports!! They've supposedly stepped up security there.

Why would they need to step up security at the airports if this was a car-bombing attempt at TS?

The two would have no correlation....

By "stepping up security" does that mean detaining and harassing every middle-eastern looking passenger?

Yes, and also raking in lots of overtime a la post 9/11.

Imagine the reaction if a bomb-plot suspect did succeed in escaping via a US (especially NY-area) airport. Plus: the security apparatus is in full CYA mode.