Lance Orton
*Somebody is about to see his t-shirt hustle explode in sales.
Lance Orton, the street vendor credited for helping to save Times Square from an attempted terrorist attack on Saturday, visited the Today show this morning to discuss the events leading up to his discovery of a vehicle that turned out to contain a crude firebomb.
The T-shirt salesman alerted a mounted policeman when he noticed smoke coming from the parked SUV Saturday evening. Inside the vehicle were enough ingredients to do some major damage – propane tanks, gasoline, fireworks and alarm-clock detonators.
Orton is being hailed as a hero who may have saved uncounted lives through his alertness.
“People take it lightly,” Orton told Today’s Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer on Monday. “I’ve had a few situations where I’ve told people about things; they say, ‘That’s nothing.’ But you can’t take that attitude.”
Orton was wounded in Vietnam and gets around with a cane. He said he was sitting next to his wares when he saw a Nissan Pathfinder parked with its emergency flashers on and its motor running. A small amount of smoke was coming out of it.
The hero vendor said he didn’t see who got out of the vehicle because of a performance on the other side of the street. “I was distracted by the crowd,” he said.
But then he saw the vehicle. “I wondered why nobody noticed it,” he said.
One of Orton’s helpers suggested calling 911. Orton said he pointed at mounted police officer Wayne Rhatigan, who was on duty in Times Square.
“There’s a patrolman right there on the horse. I asked one of my guys, ‘Go over there and grab that officer,’ ” Orton recalled. “He came over on horseback. He saw what I did. It was steadily getting worse.”
When popping noises and flashing sparks came from the car, Rhatigan quickly led police in, moving pedestrians to safety and clearing traffic so that the fire department and bomb squad could neutralize the bomb before it exploded.
Another vendor named Duane Jackson also noticed the smoking vehicle and alerted police. Jackson ended up doing numerous interviews and having dinner with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Officer Rhatigan at a Times Square restaurant, but Orton brushed off pleas for interviews and passed on dinner with the mayor.
He did agree to talk to “Today,” telling Lauer just before going on the air, “I could have been here playing a harp this morning.” Asked later how he felt, he said, “Glad to be here.”
“passed on dinner with the mayor.” lol That’s not something you see everyday. I’m wondering how the egotistical Bloomberg took that brush-off. Too funny.
I thought that was funny too and I don’t blame him one bit! Everyone seems to be focusing on the cops but I’m happy that the vendors are getting their just due, too.
For real! If it wasn’t for dude, the cops wouldn’t even know about it! They didn’t even show him on the news, it was all about NYPD, and he was that vendor. I don’t blame him for not wanting to eat with Bloomberg.
You mean they didn’t have a yty getting all the credit before finally realizing that the real hero was in fact black?
Ft. Hood, Jessica lynch, …
Reds, the way the media is telling it, the vendors were a ‘footnote’ in this story and the only heroes are the cops.
If it wasn’t for the keenness of those vendors, Times Square would have been totally destroyed.
I’m confused. Are there 2 different black vendors who alerted the cops about the suspicious SUV? I saw a different guy on GMA yesterday morning.
Okay, I should have read more carefully. But there are 2 vendors claiming credit for alerting the authorities. I hope they both did but it doesn’t matter. Good lookin out by both guys.
Muslim Vendor Gets No Credit in Helping to Foil Times Square Bomb Plot
As the media focuses on the fact that the suspect in the failed Times Square bomb plot is a Pakistani Muslim. What about the man who first noticed the smoke rising from the SUV? A street vendor, a Muslim immigrant from Senegal, says he first sounded the alarm and helped stop the plot.
Most of the media have focused on two street vendors who are veterans of the Vietnam war. Lance Orton and Dwayne Jackson have both been interviewed on network news shows and both received phone calls from President Obama thanking them for their vigilance.
But there’s a third vendor who says he was the first person to notice the smoke rising out of the car parked right in front of his table and alert others. Unlike the other vendors on the block, he’s received barely any attention for his efforts. Alioune Niass is an immigrant from the West African nation of Senegal and an observant Muslim.
ALIOUNE NIASS: I am the first person who saw. Look at this, this is my table right here. I do not know how Lance, he’s going to see this. His’ table’s over there.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/6/muslim_vendor_gets_no_credit_in