A store in Pennsylvania has released video of the suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing buying fireworks.
Footage from the Phantom Fireworks showroom in Matamoras, Penn., shows Faisal Shahzad buying fireworks on March 8, according to Phantom.
Phantom says that Shahzad bought six to eight boxes, each containing 36 Silver Salute M88 fireworks, a consumer-grade product made mostly of paper and cardboard. He also purchased two fireworks shells designed to go off high in the air as well as two ground-based sparklers. The purchase totaled less than $100.
Officials say Shahzad tried to use the M88 fireworks to detonate the crude car bomb.
Phantom Presdident Bruce Zoldan told New York City's MYFOXNY about the company's decision to release the tape:
The company said that it had been offered a "substantial amount of money" to sell the video, but decided to release it publicly to the media instead.
"Our integrity and our sense of responsibility is much more valuable to us than any profit we could generate from release of the video," said Bruce Zoldan, president of Phantom Fireworks.
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Even if used together, the firecrackers could not have caused an explosion, the store's Vice President William Weimer said Wednesday.
"The M88 he used wouldn't damage a watermelon. Thank goodness he used that," said Bruce Zoldan.
Each M88 has an amount of pyrotechnic powder equal in size to less of a sixth of an aspirin. Fireworks purchased illegally can be up to 1,000 times more powerful, Zoldan said.
"There's no doubt, had he bought this on the black market, that the outcome in New York would have been totally different," Zoldan said.
In Pennsylvania, Shahzad had to show his driver's license and fill out an application to buy the fireworks, Zoldan said. On the form, "the individual put his last name first, and his first name last, probably intentionally," Zoldan said.
Phantom Fireworks requires proof of age and out-of-state residence to enter the store's showroom because of laws that prohibit Pennsylvanians from buying most fireworks. The store is off an interstate near the New York border.