Hero Vendors Alerted NY Cops to Smoking SUV

(May 3) -- Lance Orton and Duane Jackson have reported thieves and hustlers to New York police during their many years as street vendors in Times Square.

On Saturday evening, a warm night with thousands of tourists strolling by, the disabled Vietnam vets saved countless lives when they became suspicious of an idling SUV, parked haphazardly and billowing smoke.

They alerted police, who quickly responded and cleared the area around the bomb-laden Nissan Pathfinder.

At first, Orton said, he saw a little smoke. "Then it got steadily worse and was coming from all sides of the car," he said this morning on NBC's "Today" show.

"Whoever did this, luckily, did an amateur job," he said.

Orton, who sells T-shirts, called over to police officer Wayne Rhatigan, who was patrolling the area on horseback. Rhatigan called for backup and was credited with beginning the evacuation. The bomb failed to detonate.

Jackson also pointed out the smoking Pathfinder after noticing it in a lane where tour buses turn.

"Why is this knucklehead parked in the bus lane?" Jackson, 58, recalled asking himself, according to the New York Daily News. "Smoke started coming out of it, then the pops began -- five or six of them.

"They sounded like firecrackers," he said. "That's when everyone started running."

Jackson said he noticed that the key in the ignition was attached to many others. He thought the number of keys was strange. "It just kind of caught my attention," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The vendors, who rely on vending permits for disabled veterans, said they are used to reporting thieves or hustlers to police.

"We're family out here," Jackson told the Daily News. "We have to look out for each other."

"We know the cops here by first name -- we have their cell numbers," he told The New York Times.

At first, Orton ducked the media, saying he didn't want attention, but later he came forward. "I'm not a celebrity," he told the Daily News. "I'm just an average Joe. It's nice, but I'm not a glory hound."

When he finally left Times Square Sunday morning, wearing a white fedora and limping with a cane, he repeated the New York City transit authority's counterterrorism slogan to reporters: "See something, say something."

Those words, he said, cannot be taken for granted.

"I've had a few situations where I told people about things," Orton said on "Today." "They said, 'Oh, it's nothing. It's no big deal.' But you can't take that attitude the way things are these days."

Jackson agreed, telling ABC that "vigilance is a key word."

"We keep a sharp eye on everything that is going on," said Jackson, who lives in the Westchester County town of Buchanan. "You've got to be alert. Keep your wits about you, and don't take anything for granted."

For his part, Rhatigan was treated to dinner with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday night at a Times Square restaurant.

"It's what we do. This is our job," the officer said after Bloomberg hailed him as a hero.