A massive manhunt for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings appeared to come up empty Friday despite a wide net cast by authorities that virtually shut down the Massachusetts capital amid warnings the man was possibly armed with explosives.
Authorities say Dzhokar
Tsarnaev escaped an overnight shootout with police in suburban Watertown
that left his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- the other man wanted
in the bombings -- dead.
More than 18 hours after
the search focused on the younger brother, police officers in full body
armor, carrying automatic weapons wrapped up their door-to-door search
of the area, Col. Timothy Alben of the Massachusetts State Police said.
"Unfortunately, we don't have a positive result at this point," he said.
"We think he's still in Massachusetts."
Gov. Deval Patrick,
meanwhile, lifted an order that confined an estimated one million
residents to their homes, urging people to "remain vigilant."
Bombing connection
The violence and
subsequent manhunt began late Thursday just hours after the FBI released
photos of the two suspects in the marathon bombings.
"Investigators are
recovering a significant amount of homemade explosives" from the scene
of the shootout, Massachusetts State Police spokesman David Procopio
told CNN.
It was not immediately
clear what explosives were recovered, but the discovery followed a tense
night in which authorities say the brothers allegedly hurled explosives
at pursuers after killing an officer and hijacking a car.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was
wearing explosives and a triggering device when he died, a source
briefed on the investigation told CNN on condition of anonymity.
The search followed a
violent night in which authorities say the two men allegedly hurled
explosives at pursuers after killing Massachusetts Institute of
Technology police Officer Sean Collier and hijacked a car.
With more than 200
rounds of ammunition and a number of explosives thrown during the chase
and gunbattle, Patrick said the lockdown was necessary.
The manhunt brought
Boston and its surrounds to a near standstill. The Boston Red Sox
announced they were postponing Friday night's game against the Kansas
City Royals "to support efforts of law enforcement officers." NHL's
Boston Bruins also postponed its game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The city's subway, bus,
Amtrak train and Greyhound and regional Bolt Bus services were shut
down. Taxi service across the city also was suspended for a time during
the manhunt. Every Boston area school was closed.
Boston's public transit
authority sent city buses to Watertown to evacuate residents while bomb
experts combed the surroundings for possible explosives.
Initially, authorities
said the brothers started their rampage by robbing a convenience store.
By late Friday, the Middlesex District Attorney's office backtracked on
the allegation, saying an investigation determined that the robbery at a
7-Eleven was unrelated.
Officer killed
In Cambridge, across the
Charles River from Boston, MIT officer Collier was shot and killed
while he sat in his car, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office
said in a statement.
The two suspects,
according to authorities, then hijacked a vehicle at gunpoint in
Cambridge, telling the driver that they were the marathon bombers, a law
enforcement source told CNN on condition of anonymity.
At some point, apparently at a gas station, that source said, the driver escaped.
Police, who were
tracking the vehicle using its built-in GPS system, picked up the chase
in Watertown. The pursuit went into a residential neighborhood, with the
suspects throwing explosives at police.
A shootout erupted and
ultimately one bomber -- later identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev -- got
out of the car. Police shot him, and his brother ran over him as he
drove away, according to the source, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
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.
Another 15 police
officers were treated for minor injuries sustained during the explosions
and shootout, Jennifer Kovalich, a spokeswoman for St. Elizabeth's
Medical Center, said.
Suspects background
Police believe the
brothers are the same men pictured in images released Thursday by the
FBI as suspects in the marathon bombing that killed three people and
wounded dozens on Monday.
The men are shown in the images walking together near the marathon finish line.
The first suspect --
apparently Tamerlan Tsarnaev, according to authorities -- 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.
But the mother of the Tsarnaev brothers refused to believe they were involved in the marathon bombings and subsequent shootout.
"It's impossible for
them to do such things. I am really telling you that this is a setup,"
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told state-run Russia Today from Dagestan.
"My son would never keep
it in secret. ...If there is anyone who would know it would be me. He
wouldn't hide it. But there was never a word."
The brothers came from
the Russian Caucasus region and moved to Kazakhstan at a young age
before coming to the United States several years ago.
"My youngest was raised
from 8 years in America. My oldest was really properly raised in our
house. Nobody talked about terrorism," their mother said.
The suspects' parents
recently returned to Dagestan in the Caucasus region after living in the
United States for about 10 years because they were "nostalgic," the
father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told Russian state-run Zvezda TV.
He accused someone of framing his sons. "I don't know who exactly did it. But someone did."
A federal official told
CNN that Dzhokar Tsarnaev came to the U.S. as a tourist with his family
in the early 2000s and later asked for asylum. He became a naturalized
U.S. citizen in 2012. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was not a naturalized citizen,
said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He came "a few
years later" and was lawfully in the United States as a green-card
holder.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had
studied at Bunker Hill Community College and wanted to become an
engineer, according to those who knew him. He then took a year off to
train as a boxer.
'I don't understand them'
The official said that a
posting on a social media site in the elder brother's name included the
comments: "I don't have a single American friend. I don't understand
them."
Dzhokar Tsarnaev
attended Cambridge Rindge & Latin, a public high school, said Eric
Mercado, who graduated a year behind the suspect. Mercado said Tsarnaev
had worked at Harvard University as a lifeguard.
"We hung out; we partied; we were good high school friends," Mercado told CNN.
"We're all, like, in
shock. We don't really understand. There were no telltale signs of any
kind of malicious behavior from Dzhokar. It's all coming as a shock,
really."
Mercado said he lived a block away from the suspect and did not know his older brother.
Dzhokar Tsarnaev is
currently registered as a student at University of Massachusetts
Dartmouth, which ordered its campus evacuated on Friday. The school is
located 65 miles south of Cambridge, just west of New Bedford.
Larry Aaronson, Dzhokar
Tsarnaev's neighbor and a former teacher at the high school Tsarnaev
attended, called him a "wonderful kid."
"He was so grateful to be here, he was compassionate, he was caring, he was jovial," Aaronson told CNN.
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