IN CASE: After the initial scare was deemed harmless, cops check a suitcase outside the theater yesterday as its owner (red shirt) stands by. (G.N.Miller/New York Post)
IN CASE: After the initial scare was deemed harmless, cops check a suitcase outside the theater yesterday as its owner stands by. (G.N.Miller/New York Post)
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This joke bombed on Broadway.
Michelle Obama and her daughters were on their way to see “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” yesterday when a dope said he would bomb the theater if he didn’t like the play.
“If the show’s no good, I’m going to blow it up,” the unidentified theatergoer cracked while holding a briefcase and passing through heightened security before the 3 p.m. matinee, a federal source told The Post.
Secret Service agents who were screening at the Foxwoods Theatre in Times Square immediately went on high alert. They searched the place but quickly determined that the “threat” was bogus and that the man just thought he was being funny, the source said.
It was unclear whether the man knew the first lady and daughters Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11, were going to see the show.
Obama and the girls were still in their motorcade — heading to Midtown after the first lady attended a brunch fund-raiser in Westchester — when the bomb scare occurred, the source said.
The agents slowed down the motorcade so the theater could be searched before they arrived, the source said.
The first lady and the kids went on to watch the show — as the bomb squad checked a suitcase left outside. It, too, was harmless.
During the show, “Spider-Man dropped in front of [Obama], stopped and saluted,’’ said audience member Waldemar Guerra, 52, a tourist from Brazil who saw the first lady and kids in the front row “smiling a lot.”
Hours earlier, Michelle Obama had spoken to about 120 supporters — who had shelled out $1,500 apiece — at a Westchester brunch to support President Obama’s re-election. It was held in the Blue Hill restaurant at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills.
“And, truly, from now until November — and the time is getting shorter — Barack is going to need everyone to get out there and to remind people about our values. Remind them what’s at stake, what we’re fighting for,” she told the guests.
Yesterday’s theater scare was the second security flap in a week involving the first lady.
A Washington, DC, cop who works as a motorcycle escort for the first family is under investigation for allegedly telling colleagues he would shoot her, then showing them a photo on his cellphone of a gun he would use, The Washington Post reported.
The cop may also have used a phone app that makes the sound of gunfire, the paper reported.
Additional reporting by Antonio Antenucci and Bob Fredericks