One of the largest manhunts in US history forced the virtual lockdown of the city of Boston as an army of law enforcement officers searched for the survivor of two brothers suspected of bombing the city’s marathon.
Hundreds of thousands of Bostonians became prisoners in their own homes as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (19), an ethnic Chechnyan and US citizen - described as “armed and extremely dangerous” – remained at large.
Police confirmed the death of his older brother, Tamerlan (26), in a shootout with police in the suburb of Watertown outside Boston on Thursday night. The hunt for Dzhokhar continued after he escaped.
As large parts of the city were shut down to try to catch the surviving suspected bomber, residents in the suburbs of Watertown and Cambridge to the west of Boston were told to stay at home, lock their doors and not to answer them as Tsarnaev was sill on the loose.
Boston’s public transport was closed yesterday and the train service with New York, one of the most travelled routes in the country, was stopped as the unprecedented measures turned the city into a ghost town. Yesterday’s lock-down on one of the busiest days of the week in the north-eastern US city came after a dramatic night and the FBI’s release of the first images of the bombers suspected of killing three people and injuring more than 170 in Monday’s blasts.
Fatally wounded
The two brothers were suspected of robbing a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cambridge at 10.30pm on Thursday.
Twenty minutes later, a police officer, Sean Collier (26), patrolling the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was fatally wounded by multiple gunshots after responding to a disturbance.
The pair then hijacked a Mercedes car at gunpoint, briefly kidnapping the driver before releasing him unharmed. They were then chased by armed police into Watertown where they fired shots and threw explosive devices at police.
The chase ended with a gunfight between the brothers and police in Watertown where Tamerlan was injured and captured. He was brought to a Boston hospital at 1.20am and died of his wounds 15 minutes later.
One transit police officer was critically injured in the firefight with the heavily armed brothers. A further 15 law enforcement officers required treatment for injuries.
Police continued their house-by-house search in Watertown yesterday in the hunt for Dzhokhar. They surrounded his apartment in Cambridge, preparing to carry out a controlled explosion before searching the property, suggesting that investigators fear potential booby-traps. About 60 to 70 per cent of the houses in the neighbourhood had been checked by lunchtime yesterday without anyone being detained, said police.
