Friday, April 19, 2013

Breaking: Boston in lockdown as Marathon Attack suspects flee - throw bombs at police



(CNN) -- Police sealed off densely populated portions the Boston metro area early Friday after a violent night of chasing the Boston Marathon terror suspects left one of the men and a police officer dead.

Police ordered businesses in the suburb of Watertown and nearby communities to stay closed and told residents to stay inside and answer the door for no one but authorities. Boston authorities advised the same. The city's subway, bus and Amtrak train systems have been shut down. Taxi service across the city was suspended. Every Boston area school is closed.

"It's jarring," said CNN Belief blog writer Danielle Tumminio, who lives in Watertown.

Boston's public transit authority sent city buses to Watertown to evacuate residents while bomb experts combed the surroundings for possible explosives.
Police: 1 suspect dead, 1 on the run
Armed police sweep Boston homes

Police shot one of the men dead after a wild car chase through Watertown in which authorities say they hurled explosives at pursuing officers.

Police believe the men are the same ones pictured in images released Thursday by the FBI as suspects in the marathon bombing that killed three people Monday.

The men are shown in the images walking together near the marathon finish line.

Several sources told CNN that the dead suspect has been identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26. The one still being sought is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, age 19.

The first suspect, the one believed killed by police, appears in the images wearing a dark hat, sunglasses and a backpack. The second suspect, wearing a white cap, is the one who remains at large, police said.

Police warned Watertown residents to lock their homes and stay away from their windows and doors.

Federal, state and local law officers are swarming through Watertown, going door-to-door to track him down, said Massachusetts State Police spokesman Col. Timothy Alben.

Police officers in full body armor, carrying automatic weapons, flooded the area as authorities praised residents for their cooperation.

"We need more time," Alben said. "We're making significant progress up there. But it may take hours to do this."

"This situation is grave." Alben said earlier. "This is a very serious situation that we are dealing with."

The violence began late Thursday with the robbery of a 7/11 convenience store, he said. Soon after, in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was fatally shot while he sat in his car, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said in statement. Police believe the bombing suspects were responsible for the shooting.

The same two suspects, according to authorities, then hijacked a car at gunpoint in Cambridge. They released the driver a half-hour later at a gas station.

As police picked up the chase, the car's occupants threw explosives out the windows and shot at officers, according to the district attorney's office.

Officers fired back, wounding one of the men, possibly the person identified by the FBI as suspect No. 1, who is seen in the images released Thursday in a dark cap, sunglasses and wearing a black backpack.

The man died at Beth Israel Hospital. He had bullet wounds and injuries from an explosion, according to officials. The second man apparently escaped on foot.

Richard H. Donohue Jr., 33, a three-year veteran of the transit system police force, was shot and wounded in the incident and taken to a hospital, a transit police spokesman said Friday. The officer's condition was not immediately known.

CNN photographer Gabe Ramirez arrived in Watertown as the chase ended.

"Police were in a standoff with the vehicle just down the hill," Ramirez said. They ordered one suspect out and commanded him to strip down completely naked before putting him in a patrol car, which did not leave the scene.

The man was later released and is not a suspect in the case.

But while the man was being held, FBI agents approached the squad car, and police ordered the man back out of the car. FBI agents questioned him -- still fully undressed -- on the sidewalk.

In an early phase of the lockdown, a man could be seen lying face down on the street with his hands outstretched in front of him and his legs crossed. It is unclear whether this was the man who was arrested and ordered to undress.

Details about suspects

According to a source briefed on the investigation, the suspects involved in the Boston bombing are originally from the Russian Caucasus and had moved to Kazakhstan at a young age before coming to the United States several years ago.

Another source, from federal law enforcement, also told CNN that the man being sought has been in the United States for at least a couple of years.

The man identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother, had studied at Bunker Hill Community College and wanted to become a engineer, the source said. He then took a year off to train as a boxer.

The source told CNN's Deborah Feyerick that a posting on a social media site in his name included the comments: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand them."

aThe source added that it should not be assumed that either brother was radicalized because of their Chechen origins.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

New Photo Appears To Show Boston 'Suspect 2' Behind The 8-Year-Old Victim Michael Kelley




Click to enlarge


A photo posted on reddit appears to show Boston Marathon Bombing "Suspect 2" walking behind what appears to be 8-year-old victim Martin Richard, with what appears to be Suspect 2's backpack is on the ground between them.

Another version of the photo focusing on what looks like Suspect 2 and his bag, but blurring out the crowd, was previously aired by Fox 25 and other news outlets.

These photos are unconfirmed. However, a long thread of analysis on Reddit suggests that Martin and his family are shown here.

Reddit previously picked up on a hi-res image of Suspect 2 that was later effectively confirmed by the FBi and the New York Times.

Earlier the FBI released images of two suspects and asked for the public's help identifying them.

A user on reddit notes that the picture shows the spot of the second bombing because the background shows the sign for the Atlantic Fish restaurant, which is located where police place the second blast.

As amateur investigators around the world study images from the case, other tragic stories from the April 15 attack can be seen more clearly too.

The above photo, if it does indeed show Martin Richards and his family, is heartbreaking

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-photo-suspect-2--victim-2013-4#ixzz2Qske4X80

Internet sleuths uncover another possible (high quality) image of one of the Boston Marathon Bombers

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Although Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston field office said "The photos released by the FBI  today are "the only ones that the public should view to assist us, other photos should not be deemed credible [and] create undue work for vital law enforcement resources." that didn't stop the amateur sleuths at REEDIT who scoured the thousands of photos posted on the internet and found what may very well be a much clearer image of one of the persons wanted for questioning in conjunction with the bombing.

The official photos published on the FBI's Web site show two men, one wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a backpack, and the other wearing a white baseball cap, around the scene of the blasts. 

The stills - blurry and pixelated because they were pulled from low-resolution video cameras - show two men, one wearing a black baseball cap and carrying a backpack, and the other wearing a white baseball cap, around the scene of the blasts. You can view the FBI's images HERE.

The new high resolution image - showing what might be one of the bombers fleeing the blast was found posted on a website featuring advertising for pornography. It's only a matter of time as more photos are posted to the Internet, undoubtedly more images purported to be  of the suspected bombers will begin appearing. The source of this new image is unknown.

An announcement on Reddit posted after the FBI's press conference began says: "At this point in time the only photographs that are allowed to be posted in this subreddit are images that may contain the FBI's two suspects -- all others will be deleted."

UPDATE: The original photographer of the photo above has been identified. His original post (on Facebook) along with the photo read:

" Friends & Family,I have been feeling down since the Boston Marathon bombing because I couldn't do anything to help the injured victims...until now. Thanks to my friend Jason who pointed out to me that the photo I took right after the second bomb and posted on FB has suspect #2 in the left hand corner of the photo. White baseball cap turned backwards, black sweatshirt, NO BACKPACK right after the bomb went off. Compare to the ones posted by CNN, it is unmistakable. I spoke to the FBI and it is may be the best photo they have at current time!!! One step closer to taking these @!#?#'s down...share as much as you can so that if someone knows this person they can turn them in."

FBI releases photos/video of Boston Marathon bombing suspects

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Sources say Boston Marathon bombs were pressure cooker IEDs.




By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A person briefed on the Boston Marathon investigation says the explosives were in 6-liter pressure cookers and placed in black duffel bags.

The person says the explosives were placed on the ground and contained shards of metal, nails and ball bearings. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.

The person says law enforcement officials have some of the bomb components but did not yet know what was used to set off the explosives.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday the bombings were an act of terrorism but investigators do not know if they were carried out by an international or domestic organization, or perhaps by a "malevolent individual.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/boston-marathon-explosion/2013/04/16/source-boston-explosives-made-pressure-cookers-metal-ball-bearings#ixzz2QeGQIc98

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