Less than twelve hours after the FBI released photographs and video of two men they considered suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing attacks, police have confirmed that one of those suspects is dead after a chaotic night that began with the fatal shooting of an MIT Campus Police Officer:
WATERTOWN — Police this morning are searching a 20-block area here for one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects after a violent night during which an MIT Police officer lost his life and a Transit Police officer was seriously wounded in a firefight. The other Boston Marathon bombing suspect, who was wearing a black hat in photos released Thursday evening, is dead after firing bullets and launching explosives at police.
Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said the man now known as Marathon bombing Suspect #2, the man with the white baseball cap who actually dropped the bombs at the race finish line, is the person being sought by a massive collection of federal, state, and municipal police.
“We believe this to be a terrorist,” Davis told reporters about 4:30 a.m. today. “We believe this to be a man here to kill people.”
Police are warning residents in East Watertown to stay in their homes, and not to answer the door unless they see a uniformed police officer outside. They said drivers should not stop in the area roughly bounded by Dexter, Laurel, and Arsenal streets.
According to State Police Colonel Timothy Alben, the night’s outbreak of violence began about 10:30 p.m. police received reports of a robbery of a convenience store in Kendall Square near MIT. A few minutes later, an MIT police officer, who has not been identified, was shot multiple times while in his cruiser at Main and Vassar streets, near Building 32, better known as the renowned the Stata Center on the MIT campus.
The officer was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General Hospital.
A short time later, two men carjacked a Mercedes SUV at gunpoint, and the owner of that car was able to flee at a gas station on Memorial Drive. The SUV proceeded out Memorial Drive toward Watertown followed by a long train of police vehicles in pursuit.
At one point during the pursuit, the two suspects opened fire on Watertown police and a Transit Police officer, who was shot and who is now in critical condition at a Boston-area hospital this morning.
Watertown, Massachusetts is basically under lockdown at this hour, with police preparing to do door-to-door looking for the second suspect. During the night, there was some discussion, none of it official, about what the names of these people may or may not be but none of that has been confirmed. There were also rumors that one of the suspects may have been a Brown University student who went missing about a month ago, but that is now apparently not the case. NBC’s Pete Williams, who has been one of the few reporters who has been accurately on top of this story from the beginning, is reporting this morning that Federal officials believe that these two men may have international ties and foreign military training of some type, and that they may have been in the country legally for at least the past year. Whether they have confederates or not is a question that we don’t have an answer to at this point.
Update: From a local Boston television station, here’s video of the police shootout in Watertown, apparently the one that ended with the death of the first suspect:
Further updates from NBC News:
The two suspects in the Boston marathon bombing may have “international ties” and overseas military training, NBC is reporting Friday morning.
“We believe that these individuals have international connections, that they’re foreign nationals,” the network’s Michael Isikoff said on MSNBC.
The network also reported the suspects have been living legally in the United States for about a year.
“They believe that these two men came to the U.S. about a year ago and may have some overseas military experience,” NBC’s Pete Williams said. “We’re not positive where they came from. We don’t have positive identification on them.”
Suspect #2 remains at large.
