couple vendors, is this your car? they re like, no, we don t know whose this is. i looked back and saw, you know, the ignition running and hazard lights on. it was parked happen hazardly. i was like, u hoerkh-oh, this i than a parked car and cigarette in an ashtray. was a emitting smoke and wreaked of gun powder. long night in times square. still he made his daughter s lacrosse game today, he s the coach. he gets daughter with the new york city major tonight. wayne ratigan. back to our panel. you see a cop like that, it s just a hero. he notices right away details. the ignition is running, parked happen hazardly. how do you start in the 24 hours, larry, start with you, to take here s what we know so far, put up a map, connect dots, try to go from there. what are you looking for now? they re looking for the unexpect. i mean, they start with some assumptions in terms of how people think and act but push
york city police department did a great job, the officer who found this, the t-shirt vendor who led the officer to it, but how much can this thwarted plot be credited to the bomber, who just didn t do a good job of detonating whatever it is that he wanted to detonate? you know, i ve been talking about this all day with experts in various fields of security and i think that s going to be the big takeaway from this, don. i mean, thank goodness that this guy or this person or this team, whoever put this bomb together, didn t really know what they were doing. not necessarily amateurish, but such a roog/goldberg-esque system. all indications were this thing was going off prematurely, and that s why he ditched the car the way he did. what you have here is a vehicle that penetrated all the
pointed this out? do you feel good you pointed this out to do you feel like you of course. what do you think? this was important for you? of course. to the people of new york, what do you want to tell them? what do you want them to know? your message, lance, to the people of new york. if you see something, say something. we go now to the quick-thinking police officer, wayne ratigan treated to dinner tonight by a grateful mayor bloomberg. the officer knew immediately something was wrong. wayne robinson, the vendor alerted me to a car that was smoking, went over there, smelled gun powder with my partner pam duffy. and we knew something was up as soon as you smelled the gun powder. cnn correspondents and producers have been digging on this story since it broke last night. let s get to national correspondent susan candiotti she joins us with new developments. susan? reporter: well, some of the latest developments include this. we re learning more about the
city, the police officer who sounded the alarm late on saturday night, started evacuating a packed times square, only moments after learning that smoke was pouring out of a suspicious vehicle. the nypd police officer, wayne ratigan, is with me now and sir, good morning to you! hats after to you, my friend. thank you. bill: i know you re getting a lot of attention that frankly you re not in the job or the business to get this kind of attention, but you and a few others may have saved a catastrophic situation from unfolding in times square on saturday night. i just want to recreate the moments here, okay? it s 6:30 in the evening, you know how warm it was on saturday, the city was packed, the sidewalks had literally thousands and thousands of people throughout the entire city. you are notified by a street vendor who sees what coming out of an suv pathfinder? as i was walking downtown, he comes up to me and tells me the car over there is smoking.
uma: two street vendors possibly stop a massive terror attack, dwayne jackson alerted police to a smoking suv and describing what he saw. listen: i approached the car, i saw the keys inside. it was it running. yes, the car was running and flashing lights were on and i kind of instantly looked around, to see, hey, whose car is this, and no one stepped forward, and, then about that time, the officer came up on the mounted horse and he s asking me, do i know whose car it is and, a couple officers came and one of the officers from midtown south, a regular beat cop and said dwayne did you see the guy get out and unfortunately i didn t see the person get out of it and, you know, the windows were tinted in the back and looking around and he pull out his flashlight and didn t see anything and shortly after that, that is when the first explosion