Anyone else catch the glimpse of this a few days ago?
A crude car bomb made from gasoline, propane, firecrackers and alarm clocks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on May 1, 2010, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion. Just before midnight on May 3, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, Faisal Shahzad, was pulled from a Dubai-bound airliner at John F. Kennedy International Airport and arrested in connection with the incident.
A law enforcement official said the following morning that Mr. Shahzad had made statements implicating himself, and had said that he had acted alone.
Mr. Shahzad had recently returned to his home in Shelton, Conn., after a five-month visit to Pakistan. He was located after investigators traced the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder that law enforcement officials say he abandoned after loading it with gasoline, propane, firecrackers and fertilizer and parking it on West 45th Street during the busy pre-theater rush.
Mr. Shahzad is believed to have bought the vehicle from a Connecticut woman within the last three weeks for $1,300, and authorities were able to identify him through an email address he had given the seller. A law enforcement official said the two had met in a parking lot in Connecticut, that Mr. Shahzad had given the Pathfinder a test drive, and the he’d negotiated the price down to $1,300 from the $1,800 initially sought by the seller.
While Mr. Shahzad is reported to have said he had acted alone, law enforcement officials have said the investigation is ongoing. An official in Parkistan’s Interior Ministry said that Mr. Shahzad had come to Pakistan in April 2009 and departed on August 5 on an Emirates Airways flight. The official said that Mr. Shahzad stayed in the port city of Karachi during that period.
