Overnight Shootouts and Car Chases Leaves 1 Bombing Suspect Dead; The Other Still at Large
The entire city of Boston is on lockdown and both an MIT police officer and one of the Boston bombing suspects are dead after a horrific night of shootouts, explosions, and high speed car chases.
The suspects were reportedly brothers; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, is still at large.
The craziness began last night after a robbery was reported at a convenience store on MIT’s campus.
The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and family members as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers from a Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade, an uncle said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old who had been known to the FBI as Suspect No. 1 and was seen in surveillance footage in a black baseball cap, was killed overnight, officials said. His brother, a 19-year-old college student who was dubbed Suspect No. 2 and was seen wearing a white, backward baseball cap in the images from Monday’s deadly bombing at the marathon finish line — escaped.
The law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the unfolding case.
Authorities in Boston suspended all mass transit and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to stay indoors as the hunt for Suspect No. 2 went on. Businesses were asked not to open. People waiting at bus and subway stops were told to go home.
From Watertown to Cambridge, police SWAT teams, sharpshooters and FBI agents with armored vehicles surrounded various buildings as police helicopters buzzed overhead.
Authorities gave no details on how he escaped, but said he may have been in a Honda CRV that was found later in the morning in Boston.
This an extraordinarily tense, rapidly unfolding story.
We’ll keep you updated as the situation develops…
