NEW YORK — While sequestered in a New York hotel room, the Times Square bomb suspect revealed he had thought about targeting other landmarks and asked investigators why the bomb he had built failed to go off, people familiar with the probe said Wednesday.
Faisal Shahzad said he considered attacking Grand Central Terminal, Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, the World Financial Center near ground zero and Sikorsky Inc. — a defense contractor with an office in his Connecticut hometown — before deciding to abandon an SUV rigged with a homemade bomb in Times Square on May 1, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
A person familiar with the case said Wednesday that during more than two weeks of questioning, the Pakistani-American also expressed surprise that the device — a mishmash of fireworks, gasoline canisters, propane tanks and fertilizer — did not detonate.
The 30-year-old suspect said he thought the fireworks would trigger a chain reaction that would rupture the tanks and create a deadly fireball, the person said.
Shahzad, who said he received explosives training in Pakistan, even asked interrogators to explain why the device failed.
Shahzad left the smoking vehicle on West 45th Street on a spring Saturday evening as hundreds of people enjoyed the tourist haven, prosecutors said. The attempted bombing prompted a massive police response, but no one was hurt.
Experts said the bomb had been poorly constructed with a nest of wires, battery-operated alarm clocks and heavy bags of fertilizer that couldn’t explode.
There was no immediate response Wednesday to a phone call left with Shahzad’s attorney.
On Tuesday, Shahzad appeared in federal court for the first time since his May 3 arrest. Prosecutors had refused to disclose his whereabouts before the hearing, but an official told AP on Wednesday that Shahzad had been under guard at a Brooklyn hotel while he voluntarily answered investigators’ questions.
The ex-budget analyst from Bridgeport, Conn., was captured on a Dubai-bound plane sitting on the tarmac of John F. Kennedy International Airport.
