The NYPD released a 19-second video of a man who was caught looking around in a furtive manner in the hours before a car bomb was found in Times Square on Saturday night. While Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the man could be totally innocent, the police are hoping the public may be able to identify the figure, a white man in his 40s, who takes off a dark shirt (revealing a red shirt), puts it into a bag, and walks down Shubert Alley (which runs between 44th and 45th Streets), or that the man will come forward. The Nissan Pathfinder SUV that was found with M88 fireworks, gasoline, propane, alarm clocks and non-explosive fertilizer was parked on West 45th Street.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the man on the tape was seen "leaving the scene... So he may have been a witness. He may have observed something. He may be someone who was involved. We don't know. It would be premature to suggest that. We do know (that) what we would like to do is be able to identify him and speak with him."
The NYPD also showed photographs of the SUV "snaking through thousands of unsuspecting bystanders at the corner of 45th and Broadway at around 6:30 p.m. Saturday." The police are also going to review video taken by a Pennsylvania tourist that allegedly shows a man "lunging" from the SUV. The car bomb was discovered when t-shirt vendors noticed the vehicle smoking and told a NYPD mounted cop, who then went to investigate. The mounted officer then called for backup as he and two other police officers evacuated the area. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said that if the car bomb had worked, "It would have been, in all likelihood, a good possibility of people being killed, windows shattered, but not resulting in a building collapse."
The NY Times reports that when Kelly was "asked if he considered the failed bombing the work of terrorists," he replied, “A terrorist act doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by an organization. An individual can do it on their own.”
