The brothers who allegedly detonated pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon had rudimentary plans of traveling to New York for an attack on Times Square, according to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, told interrogators that he and his older brother, Tamerlan, intended to set off explosives in Manhattan, according to unnamed law enforcement officials who spoke to Reuters and NBC News.
« Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets, » said Bloomberg at a quickly organized press conference this afternoon. « We don’t know if we’d been able to [stop an attack] if the terrorists had arrived from Boston.
« Thank God we didn’t have to do that, » Bloomberg said in City Hall. « The fact is New York City remains a prime target for those who hate America and want to kill Americans. »
The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force shared information with New York officials that the Tsarnaev brothers had six bombs, including one pressure cooker explosive like the bombs that killed three and wounded more than 280 at the marathon, and five pipe bombs.
The brothers allegedly made a spontaneous decision to head to New York in a stolen Mercedes SUV last Thursday after the fatal shooting of an MIT campus police officer, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. The victim of the carjacking heard them brainstorming the idea as he was held captive in his Mercedes. The victim fled the car at a gas station and called police.
