May 5--The foreboding "BEWARE OF DOG" sign on the screen door outside Peggy Colas' house in Bridgeport has no effect on the media hounds that show up. They arrive one after the other and knock on the door. Nobody answers. So, the journalists do the next best thing: They leave their business cards and notes, asking her to call them.
Fat chance Colas will. All she did was unload a used, slightly rusted 1993 Nissan Pathfinder on a willing buyer -- Faisal Shahzad, a financial analyst -- who paid $1,300 in cash. How was she to know that someone would park the car in Times Square with a time bomb inside? And, that the meek and otherwise unremarkable Shahzad would be accused of carrying out the failed car-bomb attack?
"Hello...Who is this?" Colas whispers into her cell phone. Perhaps, she's barricaded in her house. "How did you get this number?" she demands. Colas doesn't say she won't talk to the reporter on the other line. She just disconnects the line, leaving the caller wondering if Colas has crossed into some cellular dead zone.
When the same thing happens two more times, however, the answer is clear. She doesn't want to say anything beyond what she's already told federal investigators, that she posted a for-sale notice on the Internet and Shahzad came, test drove and bought the SUV. Period. End of story.
In the first 48 hours since the SUV was abandoned in one of New York City's most popular tourist meccas, scores of ordinary folks like Colas, a 19-year-old college student from Bridgeport; Wayne LeBlanc, the owner of Kramer's Used Auto Parts in Stratford; and Tom Manis, owner of Thomas Anthony Auto Sales in Bridgeport, have found themselves pulled into a terror investigation and thrust into the media spotlight through no wrong-
doing of their own.
Each of them cooperated with law enforcement. But none of them were prepared for the media feeding frenzy that always follows a high-profile case. They are not enjoying their proverbial 15 minutes of fame. Over time, celebrities build up a tolerance to this attention. Not so with your ordinary Joes minding their own business.
"I've spent all of the past couple of days fielding calls from friends and the media, explaining that these plates that were on that SUV were stolen from a pickup truck and that Kramer's has no culpability whatsoever," says Norman LeBlanc, whose son, Wayne, owns Kramer's.
"There are people out there who will think the business is connected to a terrorism group. This is extremely embarrassing. We were never suspects," LeBlanc says. "We have nothing to do with what's happened. We're just victims like anybody else."
At Thomas Anthony Auto Sales, Tom Manis found it impossible to get any work accomplished the day after he showed the FBI his sales records on the Nissan Pathfinder connected to the thwarted Times Square car bomb attempt. When reporters and camera crews descended hours later, he says, he understood why they came to him for answers.
"The police and other officials weren't telling them anything," Manis says. "Once, they found out I had some information, they wanted to hear it. Some of them couldn't wrap their brains around the idea that an SUV we sold years ago could be resold. So, I had to draw flow charts with lines all around."
