"It looked like someone tried to detonate it and we got to it in time," a police source said. "This is a big deal. It has the makings of a real car bomb."
Three heroic cops and a quick-thinking street vendor stopped a madman from detonating a car bomb in the heart of Times Square last night, law enforcement officials told the Daily News.
The bomb squad used a robot to get inside the car. The running SUV was packed with three propane tanks, two red 5-gallon plastic jugs of gasoline, a clock, electrical components and a canister of gunpowder, police sources said.
Police said the blue Pathfinder appeared to be stolen and had Connecticut license plates belonging to another car.
"I did a lap around the vehicle. The inside was smoking," Rhatigan told the Daily News. "I smelled gunpowder and knew it might blow. I thought it might blow any second."
The T-shirt vendor - a Vietnam vet - told Officer Wayne Rhatigan (above) there was smoke coming from a Nissan SUV on the southwest corner of 45th St. and Broadway about 7 p.m., sources said.
Last fall's subway bombing plot was stopped by some sharp and hard-working federal agents and counter-terrorism cops.
Saturday night, our saviors were a mounted cop and two rookies.
Most nights, tourists and theatergoers might have asked the foot cops for directions or posed for pictures with the cop on the horse.
That snapshot is always big with the folks back home.
Saturday night, there were visitors who might very well owe their lives to those cops who might otherwise have seemed just one of the Big Apple sights.
After them came the firefighters and the bomb squad. The people who had come to see a Broadway show instead saw a drama for which our emergency services are constantly rehearsing.
The propane tanks and gasoline in the SUV would have been familiar to anybody who remembered the unexploded car bombs found in London in 2007.
The Fire Department and bomb squad rushed to the scene.
Police spokesman Paul Browne said cops were investigating a report that someone was seen running from the vehicle at some point and are reviewing security videotapes.
Cops began evacuating the Crossroads of the World as the bomb squad used a robot to get inside the car.
He alerted two rookie female cops patrolling the area. Together, they pushed hundreds of people away from the scene as they called for backup, he said.
Hundreds of tourists and locals were stranded after cops closed off massive sections of Times Square.
The suspect seen fumbling with the device vanished into the crowd and had not been found as of early this morning
South of 46th St. in Times Square is completely deserted after the bomb scare.
Police precincts all over New York City were put on high alert and ordered to patrol sensitive areas, officials said.
The curtain at "God of Carnage" and "Red" went up a half hour later than usual, but those shows were not canceled, said spokesman Adrian Bryan-Brown. Restaurants like Sardi's and TGI Friday's were also evacuated, witnesses said.
Times Square had been jammed with pedestrians all day Saturday.
Tourists rushed out of the Marriott Marquis hotel and several Broadway shows.
The men failed to ignite the propane and the world was spared an example of what those canisters can do when they exploded.
We were again spared an example Saturday night in Times Square.
That mounted cop and those rookies and the bomb squad deserve the whole city's praise.
So do all the cops who stand ready to do the same every day on our streets and in our subways.
They truly are our first line of defense and we have never needed them more then now.
Last week, two seemingly normal college graduates who had moved among us were arrested for aiding Al Qaeda.
You have to wonder how many others might be out there.
And then there are the psychos ready to wage their own private terrorism.
Just who left Saturday night's bomb is not yet known.
What is known is what stopped him.
The next time there is talk of laying off cops or letting the force dwindle, we should remember this beautiful night in Times Square, when a mounted cop and a couple of rookies made all the difference.
0 comments:
Post a Comment