Sunday, May 2, 2010

Lockdown in Times Square

By Byrne Harrison

Details are still a little sketchy about the SUV that shut down Times Square this evening. According to some news reports, it was an incendiary car bomb, rigged with propane cylinders and gas containers. In others, the SUV simply contained materials that could be used to make bombs.

Clearly, more will come out about this as the NYPD investigates.

The SUV, which was left outside the Minskoff Theatre, led to late start times of some Broadway shows, and due to the gridlock caused by the evacuation, kept many other theatre-goers from getting to their shows.

The NY Post was the first to point out that the car was left outside the Times Square offices of Viacom, parent company of Comedy Central. While there is no indication that this had anything to do with the recent Muhammad episode of South Park, you wouldn't guess it by looking at the online forums.

UPDATE: Clearly, we now know this was indeed a car bomb, and had it gone off, the results would have been catastrophic. Given the time that most of my friends and I spend in that area (and on that street), it's a pretty frightening thought.

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