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.
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." They directed people with information to call 1-800-494-TIPS.
FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard DesLauriers said they are "just beginning upon that path" 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.
Dr. Ron Walls, chair of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said at a press conference that the bombs appeared to have been stuffed with nails to cause maximum harm. An 8-year-old boy from Dorchester is one of the three known dead, and several of the injured are also children.
So far officials have identified just one victim of Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon: 8-year-old Martin Richard of nearby Dorchester. According to Rep. Stephen Lynch, who has known the family for 25 years, Richard was at the race with several members of his family, including his father, Bill, who had run the race in the past but had skipped the marathon this year because of an injury.
The family had gone to get ice cream and had returned to watch runners along Boylston Street when they witnessed the first blast, according to Lynch. He said the family immediately tried to move off the sidewalk into the street, in an attempt to get away from buildings out of fear of another blast.
That’s when the second bomb struck, killing Richard and severely injuring his mother, Denise, and his six-year-old sister, Jane. His father was hit by what Lynch described as “ball bearings” from the bomb, but was not severely injured, while Richard’s older brother, who has not been identified, was uninjured. Lynch told Yahoo News the family was “struggling as anybody in this situation would” and was planning to issue a statement to the media later today.
"This was a cowardly and heinous act," President Barack Obama said Tuesday morning. "We will find whoever harmed our citizens and we will bring them to justice."
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.
Meanwhile, in New York, a busy terminal in LaGuardia airport was evacuated due to a suspicious package Tuesday morning.
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. Allen 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 president ordered that all flags at public buildings be flown at half staff.
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.
