NYPD Interviewed Registered Owner Of SUV Used In Times Square Bomb Plot

New York City Police interviewed the owner of the SUV used in a car bombing plot at Times Square, described as the most serious such attempt since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

Authorities haven’t said if the person they interviewed, who’s the registered owner of the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, is a suspect or not.

A man selling t-shirts and handbags spotted smoke billowing out of the SUV parked on 45th Street on a prime block for Broadway shows around 6:30pm Saturday. He alerted police and that led authorities to shut Times Square down for 10 hours. Detectives even stepped on stage at the end of some Broadway shows to inform audiences they were searching for a suspect in an attempted bombing.

Authorities said they found a crudely constructed bomb inside that Pathfinder that could’ve resulted in casualties.

The SUV’s vehicle registration number had reportedly been scratched out and its licence plates were traced back to a car from a repair shop in Connecticut.

The bomb was connected to some cheap alarm clocks and was constructed using a can filled with fireworks, apparently intended to detonate propane tanks and gas cans. Fertilizer was placed in a metal rifle cabinet that had been rigged with wires and fireworks. The fertilizer, which was placed in the cargo area of the vehicle, wasn’t the volatile and explosive ammonium nitrate-grade used in some bomb attacks.

Authorities have been poring over surveillance video and footage shot by a tourist that shows a person of interest in the case – a white man in his 40s who is seen in Shubert Alley shedding an outer layer of clothing, stuffing that shirt in a bag and looking over his shoulder before walking out of the camera frame.

The Pakistani Taliban has tried to take responsibility for the bomb and on Monday, the Washington Post cited White House sources that claimed the bomb was linked to an international terror plot.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg originally said there was no legitimate evidence to suggest foreign terrorists were involved.

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