in a situation like this. well, i think, jake, in this situation she s the first person to attempt to use deadly force. she rammed her car into a police car, injured a police officer, then goes on a high-speed, reckless chase through the mall area of washington, d.c. heading for the capitol building. so it s clear that she s already decided to use that car as a weapon. and the police in this situation do not know what s inside that car. they don t know how many people, they don t know if there s explosives, if this is going to be a car bomb situation that could kill hundreds of people. so from their standpoint it is stop this person as soon as possible at all costs to reduce the threat to the public at large. and my understanding of what happened, tom, is that she first came in contact with law enforcement when she was at 15th and e right near the white house. she drove up to a checkpoint. the secret service approached her. she tried to get away.
containers and consumer grade fireworks from the vehicle. they also removed a locked metal box after opening it with an explosive charge that they found what they described as a bird s nest of wires and firecrackers. the license plate on the car came from a connecticut auto shop as well. auto repair shop is what the police commissioner said. he also said there was there were many bags of fertilizer in that vehicle. meantime, president barack obama just talked about the car bomb situation. let s go to dan lothian at the white house. dan, the president having to tackle a couple things there while he was in a very rainy venice, louisiana, to kind of survey the oil slick. he began his press conference by talking about what took place at times square. reporter: that s right. two very critical issues that the president s dealing with today. as you pointed out, talking about that attempted bombing in new york city and the president saying that earlier in the morning he had spoken with n
living here, or whether this car bombing would be whether those people responsible or the person responsible would be from elsewhere? yeah. we re not there yet, obviously, anywhere close to knowing where and who is responsible for this. but i think either way, the idea here of keeping this country safe, job number one for this white house. you re going to see them aggressively pointing out the president and his team are combatting the situation, just like you re seeing the white house being very aggressive not only with the car bomb situation, but also the oil spill in louisiana. we re hearing the president kind of bring some distance between how the federal government responded to the oil spill and how bp should be held accountable for this oil spill. you were just talking about that not long ago with dan lothian. you heard the president at the news conference in louisiana in the rain pointing out bp is to blame, bp will pay for this cleanup. at the same time you also heard th