Attempted Car Bombing - Times Square

May 1, 2010
At approximately 6:28pm (EDT) on May 1, 2010, emergency crews discovered a potentially lethal car bomb before it could be detonated in the middle of Times Square in New York, New York. A video surveillance camera recorded Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, parking his Nissan Pathfinder loaded with improvised explosive and incendiary devices and beginning the detonation process. A street vendor noticed smoke coming from the Pathfinder and alerted a police officer of the suspicious vehicle. Members of the NYPD bomb squad were called to the scene and used a robotic device to observe the contents of the vehicle. The contents included three propane tanks, one of which had partially detonated M-88 firecrackers attached to its side, two five-gallon gasoline containers filled with wires, 20 to 30 M-88 devices, a 55-by-32 inch “gun locker” with a pot of M-88 firecrackers and eight bags of non-explosive grade fertilizer. Thousands of people were evacuated from the streets of New York as authorities shut down the area for approximately 10 hours while the bomb was disarmed. Shahzad was arrested 53 hours later at John F. Kennedy International Airport after he attempted to leave the United States on Emirates Flight 202 bound for Dubai.

Selected Updates

NC4 Incident Monitoring Center issued the following alerts:

• Bomb squad is investigating a vehicle fire.   05/01/2010 16:16 PDT
  
  
• Bomb squad investigating suspicious package; Times Square shut down.
  05/01/2010 17:49 PDT
  

• Media reports state the vehicle contained unspecified explosives.
  05/01/2010 19:48 PDT
  

• Authorities continuing to investigate suspected car bomb, perimeter expanded.
  05/01/2010 21:27 PDT
  
  
• Suspected car bomb rendered safe, investigation ongoing.  05/01/2010 23:30 PDT
  
  
• Times Square and most areas affected by police activity are now open.
  05/02/2010 05:32 PDT
  
  
• Pakistani Taliban claiming responsibility. Incident closed.
  05/02/10 10:45 PDT
  

 

NC4 Coverage
NC4 provided real-time updates of incidents to its customers via its External Situational Awareness (ESA) notification solution. Analysts in the NC4 Incident Monitoring Center (NIMC) produced nine separate alerts over a 16-hour period during the attempted car bombing in Times Square. NC4 issued the first alert an hour and a half before the first local media confirmation and over four hours before national TV stations reported the incident. These alerts contained the latest information regarding evacuation orders, street closures and transportation delays, as well as the latest developments pertaining to the extensive investigation and the eventual disarmament of the improvised explosive device.

One-page printable summary with graphics