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One of two suspects in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing is
dead and a massive manhunt is underway for another, authorities said early on
Friday.
“We believe these are the same individuals that are
responsible for the bombings on Monday at the Boston Marathon,” said a police
spokesman just after dawn. “This is a very serious situation that we are
dealing with.”
The Middlesex district attorney said the two men are
suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer on
campus late Thursday, then stealing a car at gunpoint and later releasing its
driver unharmed. Hours earlier, police had released photos of the marathon
bombing suspects and asked for the public’s help finding them. A new photo of
the suspect on the loose was released later showing him in a grey-hooded
sweatshirt. It was taken at a 7-Eleven store in Cambridge, just across the
river from Boston.
Authorities warned people in
Watertown not to leave their homes and not to answer the door. During the night
a university police officer was killed, a transit police officer was wounded,
and the suspects carjacked a vehicle before leading police on a chase that
ended with one suspect shot dead.
Police said the suspect they were seeking was the man shown
wearing a white cap in surveillance pictures released on Thursday night which
had been taken shortly before Monday's explosions that killed three people and
wounded 176 at the finish of the Boston Marathon.
The blasts triggered security scares across the United
States and evoked memories of the September 11, 2001 attacks. On Friday the
authorities effectively closed down Boston, halting transportation systems and
telling people to stay home as the hunt continued.
Officials said as police had closed in on the two men
overnight they attacked the officers with explosives and gunfire before one of
them was shot and taken to a hospital, where he died.
"We believe this to be a terrorist," said Boston
Police Commissioner Ed Davis of the suspect still at large. "We believe
this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him in
custody."
The dramatic events overnight followed the release on Thursday
by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of pictures and video of two
suspects seen wearing backpacks and baseball caps in the crowd minutes before
the bombs exploded.
About five hours later, a university police officer was shot
and killed on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the
Middlesex County District Attorney said in a statement.
A short time later, police received reports of a carjacking
by two men who kept their victim inside the car for about half an hour before releasing
him, the statement said.
Police pursued that car to Watertown, where explosives were
thrown from the car at police and shots were exchanged, the statement said.
"During the exchange of the gunfire, we believe that
one of the suspects was struck and ultimately taken into custody. A second
suspect was able to flee from that car and there is an active search going on
at this point in time," Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the
Massachusetts State Police, told a news conference.
The wounded suspect was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center, where he died, said Dr. Richard Wolfe, chief of emergency
medicine.
"This was a trauma arrest, multiple injuries, probably,
we believe, a combination of blast, potentially gunshot wounds," Wolfe told
a news conference. When asked how many gunshot wounds, he said: "Unable to
count."
The blast injuries may have been caused by "an
explosive device, possibly shrapnel, thermal injury. It was pretty much
throughout the trunk. It was multiple wounds," he said.
Inside the 20-block search area, police performed
street-by-street checks of yards with full tactical gear, long rifles and full
armor, a Reuters photographer witnessed.
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick suspended all public
transportation service on the Boston-area subway, bus and rail system as a
precaution.
"People that are at subway stations or at bus stops we
are asking them to go home, we do not want people congregating and waiting for
the system to come back on," said Kurt Schwartz, director of the
Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.
Schwartz also asked people in the Boston-area communities of
Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge and the Allston-Brighton to stay indoors
and asked businesses in those areas to remain closed pending further notice.
MIT said it canceled all classes on Friday after one of its
police officers was killed.
U.S. President Barack Obama was briefed overnight by a
counterterrorism aide on the Boston bombing investigation and manhunt, a White
House official said.
