Friday, April 19, 2013 | Posted by hnm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/live/video-2
WATERTOWN, Mass. — A massive manhunt was underway Friday morning in Boston and its suburbs, after one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings
died in a confrontation with police and the second was identified as a
19-year-old immigrant from Kyrgystan who, a classmate said, attended
high school in Cambridge, Mass.
The
two suspects are brothers,
authorities said, and are believed to have lived in the United States
with their family for several years. State Department officials said the
family appears to have arrived in the country legally.
Boston, Watertown and several other suburbs were in an
unprecedented state of lockdown on Friday, with mass transit canceled,
schools and business closed and residents ordered to stay indoors.
Law
enforcement officials said they believed the at-large suspect, Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, may be strapped with explosives. They were taking extreme
precautions in an effort to avoid further loss of life.
A campus
security officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was killed
in a confrontation with the suspects Thursday night, and a transit
officer was critically wounded.
“This situation is grave. We are
here to protect public safety,” Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. “We
believe this to be a terrorist. We believe this to be a man here to kill
people.”
(See the latest updates on the manhunt here.)
The suspects were introduced to the world via photos and video footage Thursday night. The one who was killed was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26.
The
brothers’ alleged motive in the bombings, which killed three people and
injured more than 170, remains unknown, but their family appears to
have immigrated from the Southern Russian republic of Chechnya, and two
law enforcement officials said there is a “Chechen connection” to the
bombings.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgystan, law
enforcement authorities said. He has a Massachusetts driver’s license.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in Russia and became a legal U.S. resident in
2007.
All public transportation was shut down in the greater
Boston area Friday morning, officials said, and no vehicle traffic was
permitted in or out of Watertown during the massive manhunt.
Residents
of Boston, Watertown, Newton, Waltham and elsewhere were asked to stay
inside, with their doors locked. Colleges and universities announced
they would close for the day, and businesses were instructed not to
open. Streets were ghostly quiet. Thousands of officers searched
house-to-house, and some areas were evacuated.
A Massachusetts
State Police spokesman says police closed down a stretch of Norfolk
Street in Cambridge, where they think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his family
lived. “We don’t know if he’s there. There is a possibility the suspect
is there,” the spokesman, David Procopio, said.
Procopio said the
manhunt was triggered after the brothers apparently robbed a 7-Eleven
store on or near the MIT campus, about 10:20 p.m. Thursday night. They
allegedly shot the Sean Collier, a 26-year-old MIT campus police
officer, as he sat in his car. Collier, of Somerville, joined the force
in January, 2012 after working as a civilian for the Somerville Police
Department, officials said.
Soon after the shooting, the brothers are believed to have carjacked a
Mercedes SUV from Third Street in Cambridge. The driver of the car was
forced to stay in the vehicle for about 30 minutes, police said, then
released at a gas station on Memorial Drive. He was unharmed.
“The guy was very lucky that they let him go,” Procopio said.
Police were trying to activate the tracking device on the Mercedes
when other patrol officers spotted the vehicle in Watertown and tried to
do a traffic stop, Procopio said. The suspects fled, throwing what
Procopio called “IEDs” at police. Shots were fired, and multiple
explosive devices were thrown from the vehicle. Some exploded, which led
to panic and concern in the town.
Richard J. Donohue, 33, a three
year veteran of the transit police force, was shot in the chase and is
being treated at Mount Auburn Hospital, authorities said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev — who was pictured in a black baseball cap in
photos released Thursday evening— was fatally injured, law enforcement officials said.
He had been shot multiple times in the torso and also sustained
injuries from some sort of explosives, said doctors at Beth
Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, where he was taken. He was in cardiac
arrest when he arrived at the hospital, and could not be revived.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev— suspect No. 2, according to authorities — fled the vehicle on foot, which prompted the massive search.
“We have an active search going on by tactical teams. He’s considered armed and dangerous,” Col. Timothy P. Alven.
Procopio
said that after the night of mayhem police have five active crime
scenes around the Boston area. “We’ve got crime scenes we haven’t even
been able to process yet,” he said.
A high school classmate of
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Deana Beaulieu, described him as a quiet boy who had
been on the wrestling team at Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School.
They
attended school together since the 7th grade, first at Cambridge
Community Charter School, then the high school, she said. He graduated
in 2011.
Tsarnaev lived on Norfolk Street with his family, including an older brother and sister.
State
Department officials said the Tsarnaev family appears to have arrived
legally in the United States, though they did not specify when they
arrived or the type of visas the family members had received.
Chechens
have dispersed across the former Soviet republics and other countries
in the region, but officials said there are not large numbers of them in
the United States.
Chechnya has been racked by years of war
between local separatists and Russian forces and extensive organized
crime since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The extent of the
possible connection remained unclear.
Friday morning, the streets
in and around Watertown were deserted, save for the enormous police
presence. Outside the Arsenal Mall, hordes of reporters waited outside a
staging area that was taking on the appearance of an armed camp, with
State Police marching in formation, dozens of motorcycle police officers
and the arrival of two large transit buses filled with police wearing
neon safety vests. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms swept the area with a bomb-sniffing dog.
We’ve got every
asset that we can possibly muster on the ground right now,” Gov. Deval
L. Patrick said. “We are going to need the public to help us help them
stay safe.”
Michael Demirdjian, 47, a postal worker from
Watertown, said he was on his way back from Logan Airport early Friday
when he suddenly found himself surrounded by police cars.
“It was amazing,” he said. “There were police cruisers all around. Thirty to forty cruisers followed us to my house.”
He made it to his house, on Spruce Street, but “it was in the zone and they wouldn’t let us in.”
He
said he saw police going from house to house with dogs, searching, the
area blazing with flashing emergency lights. Heavily armed police told
him he could not enter.
“They said ‘no way.’ I want to go home
but it looks like it’s not going to happen,” said Demirdjian, who had
been awake all night. “I’d like for them to get this thing under control
as soon as possible.”
Sari Horwitz in Washington and Annie Gowen in Watertown, Mass. contributed to this report.
Posted by hnm
on Friday, April 19, 2013. Filed under
