NEW YORK — Police investigating a terrorism attack that could have set off a deadly fireball in Times Square focused Sunday on finding a man who was videotaped shedding his shirt near the sport utility vehicle where the bomb was found.
Police said the gasoline-and- propane bomb was crude but could have sprayed shrapnel and metal parts with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows on one of America’s busiest streets, full of Broadway theaters and restaurants on a Saturday night.
More than 100 pounds of fertilizer rigged with wires and fireworks was found with the bomb, but police said it was not the ammonium-nitrate grade that can explode.
The surveillance video shows a white man in his 40s slipping down an alley and taking off a shirt, revealing another underneath. In the same clip, he looks back in the direction of the smoking vehicle and furtively puts the first shirt in a bag, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
The homemade bomb was made largely with ordinary items, including three barbecue-grill-size propane tanks, two 5-gallon gasoline containers, store-bought fireworks and cheap alarm clocks attached to wires.
“The intent of whoever did this was to cause mayhem, create casualties,” Kelly said.
Authorities didn’t know how deadly the bomb could have been, how it failed or who was responsible.
SUV owner identified
Police have identified the registered owner of the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder — which didn’t have an easily visible vehicle identification number and had license plates from another car — and were looking to interview him. Police also were searching more video, thought to be in the possession of a Pennsylvania tourist, of the man in the alley.
The bomb was found at the height of the dinner hour, before theatergoers headed to Saturday-night shows.
Timers were connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to set the gas cans and propane afire, Kelly said.
He said the bomb “looks like it would have caused a significant fireball” had it fully detonated. He said people nearby could have been sprayed by shrapnel and killed.
Police had feared that another component — a metal rifle cabinet packed with more than 100 pounds of a fertilizerlike substance and rigged with wires and more fireworks — could have made the device even more devastating. Test results late Sunday showed that the substance was fertilizer but not a type volatile enough to explode like that used in previous attacks, said police spokesman Paul Browne.
Streets shut down
The city’s busiest streets were shut down for 10 hours, unnerving thousands of tourists. Detectives took the stage at the end of some of shows to announce to theatergoers that they were looking for witnesses in a bombing attempt.
A Pakistani Taliban group claimed responsibility for the failed attack in a 1-minute video. Kelly said police have no evidence to support the claims and noted that the same group had falsely taken credit for previous attacks on U.S. soil. The commissioner also cast doubt on an e-mail to a news outlet claiming responsibility.
The New York Police Department and FBI were examining “hundreds of hours” of security videotape from around Times Square, Kelly said.
Police released a photo of the SUV as it crossed an intersection at 6:28 p.m. Saturday.
Duane Jackson, a 58-year-old handbag vendor from Buchanan, N.Y., said he noticed the car and wondered who had left it in a no-standing zone.
Jackson said he looked into the car and saw keys in the ignition with 19 or 20 keys on a ring. He said he alerted a 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,” he said.
