BOSTON—Police raided an apartment in Boston Monday night in connection to the Copley Square bombings that left more than 170 people injured and three dead near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Seventeen of the injured are in critical condition, officials said Tuesday.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Gov. Deval Patrick—on a podium crowded with officials and politicians—said that no additional explosive devices were found in the area during the FBI's sweep, refuting reports that as many as five were found and deactivated.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said no one is in custody for the crime, but that law enforcement are interviewing witnesses.
Officials also made a plea to the public to turn in any photographic or digital evidence they have from the scene. "There have to be hundreds if not thousands of photographs or videos or observations there were made at the finish line yesterday," Massachusetts State Police Superintendent Timothy Albert said. "I would encourage you to bring [it] forward."
FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers said they are "just beginning upon that path" of of processing the crime scene and following up on leads from the public.
The injuries from the explosions include dismemberment. and local hospitals say they are treating shrapnel wounds, open fractures and limb injuries. At Massachusetts General Hospital, doctors performed four amputations, and two more patients are at risk for needing amputations. An 8-year-old boy from Dorchester is one of the three known dead, and several of the injured are also children.
"Yesterday, terror was brought to the city of Boston," Mayor Tom Menino, recovering from a broken leg, said from a wheelchair.
On Tuesday morning, Boylston Street remained closed, but Boston officials reopened some of the perimeter around the site of the explosions. Davis called the area "the most complex crime scene we've dealt with in the history of our department." A 12-block area remains closed to the public.
There were still signs of the former chaos that blanketed the area after the explosions went off at 2:50 p.m. Along Huntington Avenue, a stretch packed with hotels where many Boston Marathon runners stayed Monday night, dozens of SWAT vehicles were positioned in spaces where tourists usually board the city’s famous Duck Boat tours. And the side streets leading to Boylston were cordoned off with police tape, as investigators waved off bystanders trying to take photos of the scene.
The shopping mall at the Prudential Center, one of the city’s busiest tourist spots, was reopened but was eerily empty—absent of the usual stream of workers who use the mall to commute to their offices at the Prudential Tower, one of the city’s tallest buildings.
Along side streets, runners still dressed in their blue and yellow Boston Marathon jackets wandered the streets—some with their suitcases, as they tried to figure out a way to get to the airport, others trying to get in a daily run.
“You’re supposed to keep moving after running a marathon,” said Kathi Russo, a runner from Salisbury, N.C., who had crossed the finish line about 20 minutes before the first blast went off.
Russo, who was running her sixth Boston Marathon, spent hours Monday night trying to get back to her hotel, which was about two blocks from the second bombing site. She described a scene of “chaos” as hundreds of runners were pushed away from the blast site, not quite aware of what had happened.
Russo’s friend, Dianne Allen, was running in a later wave about half a mile away from the site when officials began to stop runners. She said people had no idea what happened until word of the bombings began trickling through the crowd, thanks to the few runners who had been carrying their cell phones.
It took Allen several hours to get back to their hotel, where she and Russo were reunited. They said several members of the group they were traveling with had been standing near the finish line and were injured—including a 16-year-old girl, who had a broken fibula, and a husband and wife, who suffered broken legs and burns.
“We don’t know a whole lot more about that,” Allen said. “It’s been hard to get information.”
Back in Washington, the White House released a statement saying that President Barack Obama had been briefed overnight about the explosions, and that later this morning he would receive a briefing from Assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other senior members of his team.
The race draws many runners from overseas—potentially part of its appeal as a target. Some foreign consulates in Boston urged visitors from abroad to reach out to their families to let them know whether they were safe. Some also updated their social media—notably their Twitter feeds—with the latest from the investigation and useful telephone numbers or other resources.
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And yes, it has happened again. And actually not surprising as to the nature of the event and the type of weapons used.
The bombs were designed to maim and kill. The shrapnel was more like a Claymore mine than a simple pipe bomb as such, required a level of sophistication and access to military grade explosives.
The timing of the explosions is odd, the greater devastation would have to had the explosives detonate earlier, which leads to a question as to how the devices were commanded. Of course, the use of the weapons at a latter time might have facilitated their placement and concealment in that the race was over and security lacking. Or, the idea was that the latter denotation facilitated escape, escape, say out of the country.
Whatever turns out to be the facts, the most pressing fact is that the attack was successful and most people are going to feel less security and more fearful, and should, for truly, it can happen again.
Well, not good news, the bombs were MacGyvered, possible done off a jihadist recipe. A more sophisticated device would point to more complex threat. These bombs, however, might imply a amateur loner whose motives are the drivers, not a world-wide conspiracy.
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