A review of the Times Square bomb scare

The latest failed, publicized terror attack happened in New York’s famous Times Square. The attempt happened during the busy dinner period and could potentially have done lots of damage and killed lots of people.  Luckily the amateur bomb did not detonate and was reported to the police by an alert sidewalk vendor. 

The suspected bomber or attempted bomber is 30 year old Faisal Shahzad who is a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan. It is easy to look back now, but this could almost turn into an episode of ‘Dumb Criminals’. Shahzad was arrested at JFK international airport as he was attempting to board a flight to Dubai. Several reports say that he had actually made it on the plane and I am sure that he thought that he was home free.

Some reports say that Shahzad was tracked down through emails that were sent in arrainging the purchase of the vehicle used in the attempted bombing.  More recent he was tracked down through the use of a disposable phone that he purchased to communicate with the sellers of the vehicle.  Most crime shows on TV will lead you to believe that these phones  can not be traced obviously that is not true.

Another dumb mistake that he made was to leave his house key in the car that he attempted to blow up. I’m sure that he was in a hurry to get out of there and was probably a bit nervous, but that was not a very smart move.  The night of the attempted bombing, he had to call his landlord, Stanislaw Chomiak  to let him in. He lived alone and told the landlord that he had taken a cab from a train station.  It’s going to be pretty hard in court to explain why his keys were in that car.