| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front |
| Coppers boom backpack in Florida... |
| 2002-09-13 |
| A bomb squad detonated a suspicious package early Friday morning in a car along Florida's Alligator Alley after an all-night search for two vehicles thought to be involved in possible terrorist activity. Three people in two cars were detained on suspicion of a possible terrorist threat after bomb-sniffing dogs alerted authorities to material in both vehicles. Explosive charges were used to blast open what appeared to be a backpack taken from one of the cars. Might be a little hard to explain this one away... Police in Florida and Georgia had been searching for the vehicles after a restaurant customer in Calhoun, Ga., notified them that she overheard three men of Middle Eastern descent discussing terrorist plans. That was stoopid. Why discuss your plans in English? Why not Arabic or Pashtun or Urdu? Unless you want to be overheard so the other customers in the Shoney's can know what tough guys you are... Eunice Stone told Fox News she was at a Shoney's restaurant with her son Thursday morning when three men at another table "started talking and laughing about 9/11." Guess they didn't have the meatloaf. They wouldn't have been laughing then... She said at least one of the men was wearing a Muslim skull cap, or kufi, and the other two were clean shaven with short hair. One had a beard that came to the chest, and two of the men were clean-shaven. All three were in their mid-20s and spoke English. "They were all well groomed," she said. "The one with the beard on his face, he held up two thumbs and said, 'Yeah, did you see him smiling at how sad they were? They think they were said on 9/11, wait until 9/13.' That's exactly what he said." Sounds like a little nugget, definitely... "The guy in the beard said, 'Do you think we have enough to bring it down?' Then the other guy said, 'If we don't have enough to bring it down, I have contacts that can bring it down.' Then they started talking about Miami, they said they had to get on to Miami." What're they going to blow there? The Fontaine Bleu? She said she listened closely, and one of the men started talking about "bringing it down" in Miami. "They were determine to bring 'it' down, whatever 'it' is," she said. She said the three men got up to pay their bill, and she and her son got up to follow them. As one of the men paid the bill with a credit card, she took a crayon and wrote down the make and model of the car, as well as its Illinois license plate number. Unless she misheard the entire conversation or made it up from scratch, this lady's not too dumb... "I just thought something is not right," she said, so she called the Georgia State Patrol on her cell phone. Yeah, that thought would have occurred to me, too... Police tracked down the cars after one of them ran a toll plaza, Lt. John Bagnardi of Florida Highway Patrol said. He said the three people were uncooperative when they were stopped and refused to allow a search, so authorities brought in the bomb-sniffing dogs. Running the toll plaza is kind of all in a piece with yakking in English where the locals can hear you. Sounds like they wanted the world at large to know what tough guys they are. "75 cents for a toll? Pick a finger, infidel dog!"... E.J. Picolo of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said the three people in the vehicles had been identified and were legally in the country, but he would not provide futher information about them. The three were being detained and had not been arrested, he said. They could well be detained until the end of the War on Terror, or Doomsday, whichever comes first... The cars, remained on Interstate 75, also known as Alligator Alley, about 50 yards apart. The Florida Highway Patrol shut down a 20-mile stretch after 1 a.m., when the vehicles were stopped. Two bomb squad technicians in hoods and protective blast suits removed a suitcase and plastic bags from one car and searched the interior and trunk. A robot was also brought to the scene, though it wasn't immediately clear how it would be used. FoxNews this morning said the bomb pups went nutz over the contents of the cars. Either they were chock full of explosives or they just reeked of Eau de Alpeau. The bomb disposal guys were still trying to decide whether to blow a suitcase when I left for work... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #8 Well, this whole thing might be spelled d-i-v-e-r-s-i-o-n. Or who knows? Possibly t-r-i-a-l b-a-l-l-o-o-n. Or what you said. |
| Posted by: Quana 2002-09-13 14:46:15 |
| #7 And now it looks like they were playing a joke? Fire in crowded theaters and all that. Anonymous, that's assuming they go the speed limit. No one does in FL on I-75. I'd say the mean speed most places is 80mph. |
| Posted by: Kathy K 2002-09-13 13:57:14 |
| #6 I used Microsoft Streets and Trips to calculate to time from Calhoun, GA To Naples, Fla. I factored in one 15 minute break every four hours, and one 15 minute fuel stop. The program give to travel time of 11 hours, 49 minutes. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-09-13 13:51:43 |
| #5 I'd forgotten they were going past (or through) Atlanta in the daytime, that does slow you down. I was figuring about 10 hours max, now I'd say 11 or so. But they still do have some unaccounted-for time. It doesn't look like they are carrying explosives , and it does look like they had legitimate reason for going to Florida. And if they did say what she reported, what do they know? Or was she just upset with them for celebrating Sept 11, and decided to get them in trouble? (You never know...) |
| Posted by: Kathy K 2002-09-13 12:23:37 |
| #4 Could be Disney World as a target. Also, I'm sure they have noticed that a lot of Jewish people live in Florida. I've been keeping an eye on the news, the cops have not found anything yet. Hope they hold them until they run their IDs. Seems like a lot of these guys turn up in Florida. |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-09-13 11:53:25 |
| #3 As to Fred's question of what they would blow up in Miami, I'd look first to the cruise ship port. It's a major facility, there's usually a couple ships coming or going, and there's lots of touristas about. It would be a big mess. And my hat's off to the woman who picked up on this. But we needn't worry. These jokers would have been trapped on South Beath quickly enough, just as soon as they walked past a couple of young women doing some European-style sunbathing. Standing stock still for hours, is a good way to get noticed, guys, especially if you're wearing a turban on the beach :-) |
| Posted by: Steve White 2002-09-13 09:44:30 |
| #2 I heard the lady herself on the news. She sounded smarter than "not too dumb". Also, shoney's hands out crayons to kids for coloring a coloring book while waiting for their kid's meal, so she grabbed what was at hand to scribble down the license plate number. I must correct Kathy K: I'm in Georgia, and used to drive I-75 from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Calhoun is an hour's drive NORTH of Atlanta, and I-75 passes through that city. Maybe 2 to 3 hours unaccounted for unless they stopped to visit someone in Atlanta or Macon. |
| Posted by: G 2002-09-13 09:29:34 |
| #1 They haven't found anything yet, but there's a 14 hour gap between Georgia and where they were caught. Calhoun's not far from the FL line. There are missing hours in there. Years ago, going 60, I could have made it from Tallahassee to where they were caught in 8-9 hours (including taking rest stops). The speed limit is now 70, most go 75+ down I-75. What were they up to in the interim? |
| Posted by: Kathy K 2002-09-13 09:11:49 |