TERROR IN TIMES SQUARE

Two weeks ago, OKWASSUP! reported on the potential terrorism dangers underneath New York City among the miles of subway tracks and platforms.  Little did we know those dangers would soon materialize above ground.

At approximately 6:30pm EDT on Saturday night, a green SUV containing a homemade car bomb was left on the corner of 45th and 7th Avenue, right in the heart of Times Square in midtown Manhattan.  Police found a substance that resembled fertilizer in the parked SUV, as well as a gas propane tank, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components.  A surveillance video shows a white man in his 40s as a possible suspect, running away from the scene and shedding clothing in Shubert Alley, which is adjacent to Broadway’s Shubert Theatre.

The alert and sharp eyes of two Times Square street vendors who first noticed the vehicle as strangely out of place, likely saved the day — and countless lives. Vietnam veteran and handbag vendor Duane Jackson, along with T-Shirt vendor Lance Horton are being called heroes today for their attentiveness in noticing the car and wondering who had left it there.  “That was my first thought: Who sat this car here?” Jackson said yesterday.  Horton said he looked in the car and saw keys in the ignition with 19 or 20 keys on a ring and immediately 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,” Jackson said.  “Now that I saw the propane tanks and the gasoline, what if that would have ignited?  I’m less than 8 feet away from the car.  Horton added: We dodged a bullet here. “We’re a family out here. We have to look out for each other.”  His advice to New Yorkers: “You see something, say something!”

Police are still unsure who may be behind the failed act of terrorism, but unsubstantiated reports are tying the event to recent threats against the Comedy Central television show “South Park.” Muslim groups are adamantly against comedic attacks against their religion, and some Muslim extremists threatened the producers of “South Park” for airing a recent episode that made jokes against the Prophet Muhammad. While most Muslims would not shed blood over a comedy show, there are followers of Islam who would kill anyone – even another Muslim – who offends their religious sensibilities. Interestingly, the SUV containing the car bomb was parked directly outside of the world headquarters of Viacom, which is the parent company of Comedy Central and the show “South Park.”

This failed act of terrorism right in the heart of New York City is a grim wake up call that we live in a vastly different world since the devastating attacks of 9/11 nearly 10 years ago.  Have New Yorkers in general and U.S. citizens as a whole become complacent and callous to the possibility that we can be attacked again, anytime or anywhere? “Clearly it was the intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, to create casualties,” NY Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in 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.”

Kelly 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, which had Connecticut license plates that didn’t match it, 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.  It was somebody who brought this to the location to send a message to terrorize people in the area.”