Global General

Video shows possible SUV bomb suspect in alley

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-05-03 10:55

Video shows possible SUV bomb suspect in alley

A surveillance photo showed the Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square, May 1, 2010. [Agencies]

NEW YORK - Police investigating a terror attack that could have set off a deadly fireball in Times Square focused Sunday on finding a man who was videotaped shedding his shirt near the SUV where the bomb was found.

Police said the gasoline-and-propane bomb was crude but could have sprayed shrapnel and metal parts with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows on one of America's busiest streets, full of Broadway theaters and restaurants on a Saturday night.

More than 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of fertilizer rigged with wires and fireworks were found with the bomb, but police said it was not the ammonium nitrate grade that can explode.

The surveillance video shows an unidentified white man in his 40s slipping down an alley and taking off a 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 Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The homemade bomb was made largely with ordinary items including three barbecue grill-sized propane tanks, two 5-gallon (19-liter) gasoline containers, store-bought fireworks and cheap alarm clocks attached to wires.

"The intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, create casualties," Kelly said.

Authorities didn't know how deadly the bomb could have been, how it failed or who was responsible.

The bomb at Times Square, one of the flashiest and best-known places on Earth, was found at the height of dinner hour before theatergoers headed to Saturday night shows.

Timers were connected to a 16-ounce (454-gram) can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to set the gas cans and propane afire, Kelly said.

He said the bomb "looks like it would have caused a significant fireball" had it fully detonated. He said the vehicle would have been "cut in half" by an explosion and people nearby could have been sprayed by shrapnel and killed.

Police had feared that another component - a metal rifle cabinet packed with more than 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of a fertilizer-like substance and rigged with wires and more fireworks - could have made the device even more devastating. Test results late Sunday showed that it was indeed fertilizer - but not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in previous terror attacks, said police spokesman Paul Browne.