12:53 A.M. Chechnya Is Not the Czech Republic, Ambassador Explains
Noting that some Americans seemed to be confused about where, exactly, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were from, Petr Gandalovič, the Czech Republic’s ambassador in Washington issued a statement on Friday explaining that Czechs and Chechens are entirely different people.
“As more information on the origin of the alleged perpetrators is coming to light, I am concerned to note in the social media a most unfortunate misunderstanding in this respect,” the ambassador wrote. “The Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities – the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.”
The ambassador’s intervention came just hours after the satirical publication The Onion spoofed the confusion with a fake news story based on a similar premise.
Adding a layer of confusion for Americans, the first attempts to categorize the suspects by their skin color were confounded by the information that they were, literally, Caucasian.
As my colleague Donald McNeil noted in 1998, however, in Russia, the word Caucasian has a nearly opposite meaning to the American usage as a racial category. In Russia, he explained, “the most discriminated-against groups are residents of the Caucasus — Chechnyans, Azerbaijanis, Georgians and so on. There, unlike elsewhere, Caucasians are relatively dark skinned — and to Russians inclined to be derogatory, this makes them “chorniye” or “black.”
Three years ago, my colleague Michael Schwirtz reported, after suicide attacks in the Moscow subway system, dark-haired people from the North Caucasus suffered from racial profiling in the Russian capital.
Though Russian citizens, Chechens and others from the North Caucasus are often seen as foreigners in Russia, especially here in the capital, and are frequently associated with immigrants from the countries of Central Asia that were former Soviet republics. More than 1,000 miles from Moscow, Chechnya has its own language, religion and customs, as well as a history of violent separatism that many in the rest of the country find alien in the best of times and threatening in the worst.
There have already been several reports of revenge attacks against people from the Caucasus in the wake of the bombings. Last week a brawl broke out on a subway train when a group of passengers insisted on inspecting the bags of several people who appeared to be from the Caucasus, according to the Sova Center, an organization that tracks xenophobic violence.
Attacks against people with darker skin and hair typical of those from the Caucasus are not uncommon in Russia.
— ROBERT MACKEY
11:26 P.M. F.B.I. Interviewed One Suspect Two Years Ago
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement Friday that it had scrutinized one of the Boston suspects at the behest of an unnamed “foreign government,” but had not found anything suspicious. The excerpt of the statement is below:
Once the FBI learned the identities of the two brothers today, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.
In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government.
— RAVI SOMAIYA
10:28 P.M. Obama Says Bombers’ ‘Hateful Agenda’ Will Not Prevail
Speaking a short time ago from the White House briefing room, President Obama said, “Whatever hateful agenda drove these young men to such heinous acts will not prevail.” He added, “Whatever they thought they could ultimately achieve ultimately failed.”
Noting that “in this age of instant reporting, tweets and blogs, there’s a temptation to latch on to many bits of information, sometimes to jump to conclusions,” Mr. Obama saluted the people of Boston for not responding to the attack by exhibiting prejudice against any group of people.
The nation, he said, must “take care not to rush to judgment — not about the motivation of these individuals; certainly not about” religious or ethnic groups.
Mr. Obama also spoke of the victims killed in the attack, Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi and Martin Richard, and Officer Sean Collier, who “died bravely in the line of duty.” Americans, the president said, “owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to all our outstanding law enforcement professionals.”
He added that there were obviously many unanswered questions, among them why “young men who grew up and studied here as part of our community” planned and carried out such attacks, and whether they had help.
The president also assured the victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas that their suffering had not been forgotten in this chaotic week.
Correction: An earlier version of this post misspelled the given name of one of the victims. She is Krystle Campbell, not Krystal.
— RAVI SOMAIYA AND ROBERT MACKEY
10:04 P.M. Live Video of President Obama’s Statement
President Obama is expected to make a statement on the arrest of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect.
When the president appears in the briefing room, the White House will stream live video of the statement.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:59 P.M. Miranda Warning to Terrorism Suspect Delayed
The United States attorney for the district of Massachusetts, Carmen Ortiz, said at the news conference that the authorities had invoked a public safety exception and delayed reading the Miranda warning to the arrested suspect.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:53 P.M. How the Suspect Was Caught
Boston’s police commissioner, Edward Davis, described how the suspect was caught.
“There was a call that came in to the Watertown Police,” he said in a news conference Friday night, from a man who had left his house for the first time following an effective police lockdown. “He saw blood on the boat in the backyard. He opened the tarp and saw a man covered with blood, he retreated and called us.”
Police officers, and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, attended, Mr. Davis said, and “set up a perimeter around the boat, and over the course of the next hour or so exchanged gunfire,” with the suspect, he said.
A hostage negotiation team from the F.B.I. eventually “removed the suspect,” Mr. Davis said, without providing precise details.
— RAVI SOMAIYA
9:41 P.M. Officials Thank Officers and the Public
Speaking to reporters at a news conference moments ago, Gov. Deval Patrick said, “I want to say how grateful I am” to all of the law-enforcement officials “who brought their A-game.” He also thanked the public for being “helpful and patient.”
United States Attorney Carmen Ortiz also expressed her gratitude and said, “Tonight we can sleep a bit easier.” She added that the celebrations would be tempered by thoughts of the victims of the attacks and the officer killed in the manhunt. Ms. Ortiz also said the investigation would continue in an effort to find out exactly what happened this week. “My journey and my office’s journey begins” now, she said.
Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, added his thanks. “It wasn’t easy,” he said, but “I feel so good about this.”
Richard DesLauriers, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Boston field office, thanked the news media for its cooperation in spreading the images of the bombing suspects.
Noting the many acts of heroism that came during the week, the Boston police commissioner, Edward Davis, said, “These are the kinds of things that came out of this savagery.”
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:31 P.M. Video of News Conference
Here, via CBS News, is live video of the news conference in Watertown that has just started.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:28 P.M. Officers Could Delay Reading Miranda Warning to Suspect
In the face of rampant speculation on Twitter about the captured suspect’s legal status, it is worth noting that the authorities could delay reading him a Miranda warning.
As our colleague Charlie Savage reported in 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation “instructed agents to interrogate suspected ‘operational terrorists’ about immediate threats to public safety without advising them of their Miranda rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present.”
A three-page F.B.I. memorandum, dated Oct. 21, 2010, also encouraged agents to use a broad interpretation of public safety-related questions. It said that the “magnitude and complexity” of the terrorist threat justified “a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case.”
“Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations, and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,” the memo said.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:10 P.M. Suspect’s Father Relieved Son Is Alive, ABC Reports
Anzor Tsarnaev, the father of the teenage suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, said, “Thank God,” when informed that his son had been captured alive, according to the broadcaster’s foreign editor, Jon Williams.
Earlier on Friday, the suspect’s father, who suggested that his sons had been framed by the authorities, told ABC news that he would be convinced of that if his younger son was also killed.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:04 P.M. ‘The Terror Is Over,’ Boston Police Department Says
The Boston Police Department just posted a triumphant update on Twitter.
— ROBERT MACKEY
8:56 P.M. ‘We Got Him,’ Boston Mayor Reports on Twitter
Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, just posted an update on Twitter reading simply “We got him.” The mayor also posted an image that appeared to show him congratulating the officers who detained the suspect.
— ROBERT MACKEY
8:53 P.M. Bombing Suspect in Custody, Official Tells Times
Our colleague Michael Cooper reports that the 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings on Monday is now in custody.
Our colleagues in Boston now report: “Two law-enforcement officials said that the suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was found in a boat parked behind a house there.”
— ROBERT MACKEY
8:46 P.M. Boston Police Report ‘Suspect in Custody’
The Boston Police Department just reported on Twitter that the suspect who was in the boat is now in custody.
Jim Armstrong, a reporter for the CBS News affiliate WBZ, said that officers on the scene cheered and walked away.
— ROBERT MACKEY
8:41 P.M. Local News Reports From Scene of Standoff
The Boston Globe reports that a journalist close to the scene of the standoff heard police officers call on the suspect to surrender.
Paula Ebben of the CBS News affiliate WBZ Boston reports on Twitter that a hostage negotiator is on the scene.
According to another WBZ reporter, Karen Anderson, the authorities were tipped off about someone being in the boat by a resident who “noticed some blood by the boat.”
— ROBERT MACKEY
8:17 P.M. Possible Image of Suspect’s Hiding Place
The CBS News affiliate WBZ Boston reports that, according to its sources, the suspect is believed to be in a boat that can be clearly seen behind a home on a Bing map of the neighborhood.
— ROBERT MACKEY
7:42 P.M. Images From Edge of Police Cordon in Watertown
Jim Armstrong, a reporter for the CBS News affiliate WBZ Boston, is filing updates on Twitter from the edge of the police cordon around the area of Watertown, Mass., where the local news media report that the authorities believe they have surrounded the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings in a boat behind a home.
— ROBERT MACKEY
7:26 P.M. CBS News Reports Suspect Is Surrounded, Sources Say
CBS News has just reported that, according to Boston’s mayor, Thomas M. Menino, the authorities believe that they have the suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, surrounded in a boat in Watertown, Mass.
The Boston Globe also reports that the suspect is “believed to be inside boat in back yard of Watertown home.”
WBZ, the CBS News affiliate in Boston, also just reported on its live video stream that police sources have said the suspect is pinned down.
Bob Orr, a CBS News correspondent, just reported that a police source said no attempt to move in on the suspect had yet been made.
— ROBERT MACKEY
7:10 P.M. Residents Advised to ‘Shelter in Place’ in Watertown
Shortly after television news journalists reported hearing shots fired in Watertown, the Boston Police Department issued a new advisory to residents in the Franklin Street area there to “shelter in place.”
The CBS News affiliate WBZ is streaming live video of its coverage, featuring a telephone interview with a reporter nearby.
— ROBERT MACKEY
6:10 P.M. Boston Lockdown Lifted
Speaking at a news conference in Watertown, Mass., Gov. Deval Patrick just told residents of Boston that the request for residents to stay indoors had been lifted, but urged people to “remain vigilant” because the suspect was at large and considered dangerous. The Boston mass transit system will resume operations immediately, the governor said.
Col. Timothy P. Alben of the Massachusetts State Police said that the state police would draw back the heavily armed tactical teams but increase patrols in the Watertown community, where one of the suspects in the Boston bombing, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was last seen alive.
“We do not have an apprehension of our suspect this afternoon, but we will have one. This is a complicated investigation,” he said, noting that the authorities went through about 20 streets, visiting residents, searching some homes and ensuring residents were not in harm’s way.
“He is a very violent and dangerous person,” Mr. Alben said. “My message to the suspect is to give himself up. We cannot continue to lock down an entire city or an entire state.”
He said the authorities would continue to rely on the public to find the suspect. “If you see this individual, do not take action on your own,” he said. He urged the public to call 911 or send the information to the F.B.I. tip line.
— MARC SANTORA AND ROBERT MACKEY
5:38 P.M. Live Video: News Conference on Manhunt
Law enforcement officials are scheduled to hold a news conference shortly to discuss the latest in the manhunt for a suspect in the Boston Marathon blasts.
5:18 P.M. New York Times Interview With Suspects’ Father
Here is a transcript of a telephone interview with Anzor Tsarnaev, the father of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, conducted Friday by Ellen Barry and Andrew Roth of The New York Times’s Moscow bureau.
Anything strange when you last spoke to your sons?
Nothing strange, nothing at all. Everything is normal, everything is well, nothing new. Everything was thought up there…. Something is wrong. They have been framed. I am watching TV and cannot believe it. What are they talking about, Watertown? He didn’t live there…. How could he live there? This is where the lie begins — why are they saying this crap?
Dzhokhar has not been in Russia since 2001. Tamerlan did come. He came to renew his passport. He stayed here and left, but did not want to go. He wanted to stay here because it was hard for him to work there.
Did he want to stay in Russia?
Yes, he wanted to stay. He looked around, what the life is here, and he wanted to stay. He said I speak English now, I can work as a translator and start some business here and go to China. He had this kind of plans.
How long did he stay with you?
Yes, he was here for six months. He had to wait for a new passport to be issued.
Was he in Makhachkala?
Yes, he was in Makhachkala. Makhachkala, he was never out my sight. He used to sleep till lunchtime, then we visited relatives. We went to Chechnya to visit relatives. He only communicated with me and his cousins. There was nobody (else). People know. I would ask him, did you come here to sleep or what?
Did he go to Turkey?
What Turkey? He has never been to Turkey. These are all lies. He must have a passport…. He did not go anywhere.
Did he want to be an American citizen?
He wanted to, of course. Why not?
But it didn’t work out, right?
Because with his girlfriend, there was a scandal. He hit her lightly. He was locked up for half an hour. There was jealousy there. He paid $250, that was it, he went home. Because of that — in America you can’t touch a woman, they wouldn’t give him citizenship.
Because of that they didn’t give him citizenship?
He had gone through the interview, that was it. But they said, he said, they will check the federal authorities, when they check me they will give it. He would have been granted it, he passed the interview. Now we have a new system where they check young people. Because he is a Muslim, I think, and a Chechen, too.
Was he disappointed?
No, he said, ‘Dad, I don’t have to go anywhere!’ He works, his wife works, he has a child, they will give it to him! He didn’t want to come (here). He had plans of his own. How could he leave everything and go?
Was he offended by the fact that they did not give him a chance?
No! No! Why would he be offended? He could come and go, arrive and leave as he wished.
Did Dzhokhar want to be a citizen?
He is already a citizen of America. He is an American citizen.
So he already had his citizenship?
He was coming for the holidays. He told me to do a visa. I was making a visa.
Did they love America?
Of course a person loves it.
Why did you not go the States?
I wanted to but I got sick. I was very sick. I thought I would die, so I thought I would better be buried here. They checked me and said I was healthy as an ox, but I was losing weight. I weighed only 50 kilos. I lost about 40 kilograms, and I had strong pains inside. I had a pancreatic problem and a hematoma in my head. I needed a surgery.
Did your kids suffer from the war?
No, my children did not see the war. They grew up in Kyrgyzstan.
They never saw the war?
Yes, we left, ran away from the war. We did not need it, you see?
Where are you from in Chechnya?
We never lived in Chechnya.
So you were Chechens living in Dagestan?
Once I arrived, I’ve been living here for a year. I wanted to leave, but I was waiting for my son to come for vacation so that we could go back together.
Your brothers in the States, they say something very different about your sons.
Well, we quarreled long time ago…. We were not on speaking terms.
They sound like they believe your sons did this.
What can they say if they did not see them for five or six years? They are just blabbing what they know nothing about. How can they speak about them if they did not see them for a long time? If they kill him now….
How many members of your family ended up in America?
Four children and parents.
And your brothers?
My brother sent me an invitation … but we were not planning to stay. But the time was such, the circumstances, persecution. You must know, there was a hunt for Chechens as for wolves in the woods.
Did your children feel like Russians or Americans?
Well, children, they get adjusted. Russia was like a fantasy for them. If a child has not grown up here, how can he think or dream about Russia?
Did you or your relatives work for law enforcement bodies before the war?
Yes, they did. They worked for the prosecutor’s office.
In Chechnya?
Yes, they were lawyers, all of them.
What is your family’s attitude to Kadyrov (the president of Chechnya)?
Very good attitude. My sister was an outstanding lawyer of Kyrgyzstan, she moved there. She is in Chechnya now because everything has straightened out. The life has gotten better, as it should be. Nobody wants a war.
What did the investigators want to ask you about?
The investigators didn’t talk much. They were not concerned about anything. They asked what and how, just like you.
Did you hear anything from the Russian leaders, Kadyrov?
I can’t think about anything like that. Seeing my child on television — he has never been to any Watertown, it is nonsense. It is nonsense. My child lives in Cambridge, first of all.
What is his character?
He has the character of the best person who could exist. Anyone who sees him falls in love with him. Dzhokhar, he is a gift from Allah, not just because he is my son — he is like an angel, this child. The Americans know him better than I do. They taught him. He was in the newspapers everywhere: he was excellent, good, kind. He worked all the time. In his extra moments, he worked so that things would not be difficult for us, his parents. He didn’t keep a penny for himself. This kind of child. You understand.
Tamerlan was also calm like that?
He was also a kind man. He was also a kind man.
I understand that your younger son took the will of Tamerlan like a law. Was that always true?
Dzhokhar listened to Tamerlan, of course. He also listened to us. From childhood, it was that way. He had his own head on his shoulders. He was a very gifted person. He had a gift of kindness, calmness, fairness, you understand, goodness? For him to do what they’re saying, it doesn’t fit him at all, it is not possible. Not at all.
Did they go to mosque regularly, both of them?
He used to bring him, Tamerlan would bring him to Friday prayers. The child, he smoked. I would occasionally find cigarettes in his pockets or his room. What kind of radicalism are they talking about? I caught him with a cigarette two or three times.
There is a feeling that in recent time they came, especially Tamerlan, became more devout?
(Line goes dead)
As CNN reported, Anzor Tsarnaev made similar charges, that his sons had been framed, in an interview with Russian state television on Friday. Mr. Tsarnaev also said that he had been questioned by the Russian security services.
— ELLEN BARRY AND ANDREW ROTH
5:06 P.M. Suspects’ Sister to Get Protection in New Jersey
The mayor of West New York, Felix Roque, said the sister of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was “shocked” about what happened and would be given 24-hour protection at her home in the New Jersey town.
“She’s in our town, and we have to offer her full protection,” Mr. Roque said.
Asked whether he was concerned about the missing suspect going to the town, he said: “The town of West New York is prepared. If he’s here, we will catch him.”
On Friday, as the police continued to search for the remaining suspect in the Boston area, law enforcement officials paid a visit to the suspects’ sister, but they did not confirm her name.
The suspects’ sister lives in a three-story brick apartment building on a narrow street in West New York lined with town houses and small commercial buildings. The police shut down the one-way street Friday morning, but by 3 p.m., traffic was allowed again.
Officials with the West New York Police Department, the county sheriff’s office and the F.B.I. — some in uniform and others in plainclothes — were seen going in and out of the building.
Dozens of news reporters congregated around the police cordon as officers brought a black computer hard drive, several plastic bags, a black plastic box and an office rug out of the building to waiting vehicles.
“They took that stuff just to see if there was any contact information and to try to see if she was truthful with them, which she was,” said the police director, Michael Indri. “She’s been 100 percent cooperative, she and her husband.”
He said she had told the authorities that it had been “years” since she had been in touch with her brothers. The officers confirmed that.
“They’ve done that,” he said of the F.B.I. “They’ve established there was no recent contact and they’ve moved on.”
He said the family was “shaken.”
“But they’re in their home and they’re going to stay in their home, and we’re going to ensure that everything is going to be fine,” Mr. Indri said. The sister lives there with her husband “and her cute little baby.”
Later in the day, eight television satellite trucks remained along the curb. A few dozen neighborhood residents stood and watched the scene.
— CHRISTOPHER MAAG
3:55 P.M. The Doctor Who Treated Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Dr. David Schoenfeld was catching up on paperwork at his home in Watertown, Mass., after midnight on Friday, when he started hearing sirens heading his way. Before long, he said, he heard gunfire. Then explosions. Dr. Schoenfeld called Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he works in the emergency room, and told them to prepare for trauma patients for the second time this week.
“I told them to get ready for incoming casualties, because it just sounded pretty violent,” he said in a phone interview on Friday afternoon. “I woke up my wife, told her I had to go to work, put on my scrubs and went to the hospital.”
He arrived at about 1:10 a.m. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance carrying Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, pulled up. He was handcuffed but unconscious, gravely wounded and in cardiac arrest, Dr. Schoenfeld said.
As a throng of police officers looked on, Dr. Schoenfeld and a team of other trauma doctors and nurses began CPR. Dr. Schoenfeld declined to describe Mr. Tsarnaev’s injuries, but The Boston Globe reported that they included burns on his right shoulder and chest and a large wound on his torso.
Officials have said that Mr. Tsarnaev was injured in a gun battle with the police, who had pursued him and his brother, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, in a car chase from Cambridge to Watertown.
“There was talk before the patient arrived about whether or not it was a suspect,” Dr. Schoenfeld said. “But ultimately it doesn’t matter who it is, because we’re going to work as hard as we can for any patient who comes through our door and then sort it out after. Because you’re never going to know until the dust settles who it is.”
The trauma team put a breathing tube in Tsarnaev’s throat, Dr. Schoenfeld said, then cut open his chest to see if blood or other fluid was collecting around his heart. Tsarnaev’s handcuffs were removed at some point during the resuscitation attempt, he said, because “when the patient is in cardiac arrest and we’re doing all these procedures, we need to be able to move their arms around.”
The team was unable to resuscitate him, and pronounced him dead at 1:35 a.m. Only as they prepared to turn the body over to the police did Dr. Schoenfeld look closely at the patient’s face and see that he looked like one of the suspects whose pictures had been released by the F.B.I. hours earlier.
“We all obviously had some suspicion given the really large police presence,” he said, “but we didn’t have a clear identification from the police.”
Dr. Schoenfeld, whose emergency room treated a number of people injured in the bombings on Monday, said he had not had time to process what he had been through in the early hours of Friday.
“I can’t say what I’ll be feeling as I reflect on this later on,” he said. “But right now I’m more concerned with everybody who’s still out there and still in harm’s way.”
He added, “I worry about everybody in the city, that everyone’s going to be O.K.”
— ABBY GOODNOUGH
3:44 P.M. Suspect Was Former Lifeguard at Harvard University
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev worked as a lifeguard at Harvard University for at least two years, said his former boss, George MacMasters, who spoke to ABC News on Friday. Mr. MacMasters said that he hired Mr. Tsarnaev to work as a lifeguard at the university three years ago and that “he seemed just like a regular neighborhood kid.”
Asked to share his impressions of Mr. Tsarnaev, Mr. MacMasters said he was
a thin young man. Looked athletic. Very polite. Spoke excellent English. He got along well with other boys he was with. They were joking amongst each other. He seemed just like a regular neighborhood kid.
Mr. MacMasters said that he had not seen Mr. Tsarnaev since being deployed to Afghanistan about a year ago, and that the suspect never seemed particularly interested in his experiences as a soldier in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
He asked me questions about it, but nothing too penetrating, and he never expressed any Islamic motivation. It was hard to tell if he was even a Muslim because he was not praying during the day or anything like that.
Mr. Tsarnaev had told friends that he thought the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were “stupid,” Mr. MacMasters said, but he was far from alone in that belief. “He’s not the only one who talked to me about thinking that these wars were stupid,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people have expressed that view.”
“It’s shocking to all of us,” he said. “I hope they can take him alive and find out what his motivation was and have some closure for these victims.”
— LIAM STACK
3:25 P.M. Heavy Security at UMass Dartmouth
At 3:15 p.m., more than a dozen police cars were seen speeding on the campus of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, about an hour south of Boston in North Dartmouth, adding to an already heavy police presence at the school, where one of the bombing suspects was a student.
The authorities evacuated the campus on Friday afternoon and announced that it would remain closed on Saturday as the sprawling manhunt for one of the Boston bombing suspects enveloped the school.
In a scene repeated across the Boston metropolitan region, the police swarmed the campus on Friday and university officials announced an immediate evacuation at 1:30 p.m. The school posted this statement on its Web site:
“UMass Dartmouth will be closed Saturday, April 20. All students should evacuate campus immediately. Those who do not have transportation off campus should proceed immediately to Lot 1, where they will be transported to a secure location at Dartmouth High School, where accommodations are being made.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remains on the run, was spotted on campus earlier this week, according to students at the school.
Harry Danso, who lives on the same third floor of a Pine Dale dorm where Mr. Tsarnaev had a room, told The Associated Press that he saw the young man in the dorm hallway this week and that he had appeared calm.
Pamala Rolon, a senior at the school and a resident assistant at the Pine Dale dorms, told The Boston Globe that she had known Mr. Tsarnaev for a year and could not believe he had played any role in the bombing.
“He studied. He hung out with me and my friends,” she said Friday morning. “I’m in shock.”
On Friday, two police helicopters could be seen landing on the campus as SWAT teams converged on his old dorm room. It is not known what they discovered there.
— MARC SANTORA
2:46 P.M. Authorities at New Jersey Home of Suspects’ Sister
The Star-Ledger of Newark reported that the authorities were at the West New York, N.J., home of one of the sisters of the bombing suspects.
The paper, on its Web site, posted video of the woman speaking to reporters from behind her closed door.
It reported that the sister, whose name was given in the video caption as Alina Tsarnaeva, said in part:
No I’m not O.K. — no one is O.K. right now. I’m hurt for everyone who has been hurt. I’m sorry for all the people who are hurt and for all the people who lost their lives.
The Associated Press reported that the F.B.I. was at the home, and that the woman said she had not been in frequent touch with her brothers.
On the NJ.com news site, reporters from The Jersey Journal quoted the F.B.I. spokeswoman Barbara Woodroff as saying the agency was “following up on all logical leads” related to the Boston bombings and the home of Alina Tsarnaeva.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
3:05 P.M. Red Sox and Bruins Postpone Games
As Boston and the surrounding area remained on lockdown, the Red Sox postponed their game tonight against the Kansas City Royals.
The Royals arrived in town on Wednesday night. The Red Sox are coming off an emotional victory over the Cleveland Indians on Thursday, where the team hung a symbolic jersey in the dugout that had “Boston 617 Strong” on the back.
For the homecoming, the team also pasted a large “B” with the word “Strong” under it on the Green Monster at Fenway Park. Friday’s game was also expected to be the season debut of the slugger and Boston icon David Ortiz, who was returning from an Achilles injury.
The Boston Bruins, scheduled to play the Pittsburgh Penguins tonight at TD Garden, have also postponed their game. Both teams canceled their morning skate earlier, and the Bruins postponed their playoff ticket sale until Monday, April 22.
— NICK CORASANITI
3:05 P.M. One Uncle Says Suspect Called to Ask Forgiveness
An uncle of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston bombing suspects, spoke to journalists from CBS News on Friday morning and said his nephew Tamerlan, killed in a gunfight with the police on Thursday night, called just hours before his death to apologize for “problems between family” that had estranged him from his uncle in recent years.
The uncle, Alvi Tsarni, also said that he could not believe that his nephews could have been involved with the bombing. “It’s crazy,” he told CBS news reporters. “It’s not possible. I can’t believe it.”
On Thursday, Mr. Tsarni also told reporters from The Journal News of Westchester County, N.Y., that Tamerlan called him at 7 p.m. on Thursday evening to ask for forgiveness. He said it was the first time the two had spoken in about two years.
Mr. Tsarni said that he did not know that his nephew had been implicated in the bombing of the Boston Marathon at the time of the call, and that he believed the apology was for a personal dispute that had kept them from speaking for so long.
“He said, ‘I love you and forgive me,’” said the uncle… who lives in Montgomery Village, Md.
But he wasn’t seeking forgiveness for the bombing. Rather, he was asking for forgiveness because he hadn’t spoken to him in so long.
“We were not talking for a long time because there were some problems,” he said, without elaborating. “We were not happy with each other.”
They spoke for about five minutes, he said. Tamerlan, who is Muslim, started out by saying, “Salam Aleikum,” an Arabic greeting meaning “peace on you.” He then praised his uncle for keeping up with his Muslim prayers.
“I told him I was praying to Allah, not drinking, not smoking, and he told me he was happy,” he said. “He was asking, ‘Did you pay your mortgage?’ I told him I was trying to pay. I asked him what he was doing. He said, ‘I fix cars, I got married, got a baby.’”
When his nephew asked for forgiveness, he replied, “I forgive you and I love you.”
Mr. Tsarni learned his nephew was a suspect only when he heard reports on Friday that he had been shot dead in a firefight with the police.
“Killing innocent people, I cannot forgive that,” he told The Journal News. “It’s crazy. I don’t believe it now even. How can I forgive this?”
— LIAM STACK
2:20 P.M. Boston Colleges Advise Locked-Down Students
With the Boston area on lockdown as the authorities hunt for the suspected bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, colleges and universities have urged their students to remain indoors and have devised plans to accommodate large numbers of students in cramped dorm rooms and residence halls.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where a campus police officer, Sean A. Collier, was slain on Thursday night, urged students to remain indoors and encouraged them to avail themselves of counseling services to handle the “emotional challenges of these difficult events.” It is posting updates for the university community on an emergency Web site.
In a statement published on the M.I.T. Web site, the university’s executive vice president, Israel Ruiz, expressed condolences for the death of Officer Collier.
“Everyone here — those who knew Officer Collier and those who did not — are devastated by the events that transpired on our campus last night,” he said. “We will never forget the seriousness with which he took his role protecting M.I.T. and those of us who consider it home.”
At the University of Massachusetts-Boston and Northeastern University, both in the core of the city, all classes and events were canceled and students were instructed to follow the government’s “shelter in place” order.
Boston University was closed on Friday and urged employees not to come to work. Students were advised to stay in their dorm rooms. The university’s dining services announced it would deliver meals to some students on lockdown, but others were instructed to retrieve food from specific dining locations that remained opened during the manhunt.
With Boston and its suburbs on lockdown, Boston University also used Twitter as a way to wash its hands of any connection to the two suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., also urged students to remain indoors and said that it would post updates on an emergency Web site.
Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass., has ordered students to remain indoors and encouraged them to contact their families. In a statement posted on the university’s Web site, Vice President Patrick J. Keating wrote that the administration saw “no immediate threat to the campus, but needs all students to follow the explicit safety orders that remain in place throughout Boston, Newton, Watertown, Cambridge, Belmont and Waltham until the matter is resolved and clearance is issued.”
Mr. Keating said that students would be permitted to leave their dormitories briefly to pick up lunch and dinner from the university cafeteria, which they were to eat back in their dorm rooms.
A Twitter account called @BCInterruption, which bills itself as “a Boston College Eagles community,” posted an update that repeated the university’s advice for students to call their families.
Tufts University also urged students to remain indoors. “We encourage everyone to stay inside if possible,” said a statement published on the university’s Web site. “Do not congregate outside, and use caution if you must go out.” It announced that it would provide “safe transportation” to and from dining halls.
— LIAM STACK
2:33 P.M. Suspects’ Aunt: ‘How Could This Happen?’
Maret Tsarnaeva, the aunt of the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon, said that her first reaction when contacted by federal investigators was disbelief.
“My first quote to the F.B.I.: They could not have done this,” she told reporters on Friday afternoon in Toronto. “My first reaction was anger,” she said. “How could this happen?”
WBZ, a CBS News affiliate in Boston, posted video of Ms. Tsarnaeva’s remarks online.
She said that if there was proof that her nephews were guilty, she would have no choice but to believe it, but that for now she remained unconvinced.
“I am suspicious that this was staged,” she said.
She described the boys as “normal young men,” “athletic” and “smart.”
“Growing up within the family, everything was perfect,” she said, noting that the boys’ father, Anzor, doted on them. “Anzor is a very loving and soft-hearted father.”
In defense of her nephews — Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who remains on the run, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died early Friday morning — she said they had come from a loving family and had settled in the United States around 2002.
The boys have two sisters, she said, who also live in the United States. Their parents, however, returned at some point to Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan region, near Chechnya.
She said that one of the men, Tamerlan, had only recently started to pray routinely and practice Islam.
“He was not devout practicing, but just recently, maybe two years ago, he started praying five times a day,” she said. “I don’t see anything bad in that.”
Tamerlan was married, she said, and recently had a daughter.
“He was very happy about his daughter,” she said.
— MARC SANTORA
2:05 P.M. Law Enforcement Looking for ‘a Number of People’
One law enforcement official said that the F.B.I. and the police were seeking “a number of people with whom we would like to speak in furtherance of the investigation.” Asked if any were suspected accomplices or co-conspirators, the official would say only that investigators were “not ready” to classify anyone yet.
Another official said that investigators had not yet uncovered any indications that the men had any affiliation with an extremist group or groups.
Several officials, asked about the tradecraft employed by the two brothers identified as suspects, said that despite the devastation they are alleged to have caused at the marathon and the killing of one police officer and grievous wounding of another, their planning and tactics appeared, at least at this point, to be flawed.
“They didn’t practice tradecraft,” said one official, a veteran counterterrorism investigator who has been briefed on the case. “Listen, I just don’t understand how anybody could do something like that and basically go home and expect that they wouldn’t get caught.”
Another official pointed to one obvious flaw in their operational strategy.
“They apparently didn’t have a plan to escape,” the official said.
But the official, citing the video released Thursday by the F.B.I. showing two men shortly before they placed the bombs, said their calm demeanor as they walked through the crowds apparently carrying their bombs in their backpacks was chilling.
“The way they walked out onto the street — it was very relaxed,” the official said. “It is scary.”
— WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
1:54 P.M. Inside the Police Cordon in Watertown
Behind the police barricades in Watertown, just past where the television crews are allowed to travel, residents locked in their homes and reached by phone described the strangeness of being at the center of the action while also being isolated from what was happening just outside their windows.
“I have been watching this since last night,” said Charles Anastasiades, 52.
He alternated between going out on his porch and watching the police activity and watching television in his second-floor apartment. Since Friday morning, his neighborhood has often seemed to be one of the prime areas of focus for investigators.
Mr. Anastasiades described what he saw from his window down Arsenal Street.
“Right now, many of the police are just parked in the lot of the mall,” he said. “And then there is another group congregating at School Street and Dexter Avenue.”
He could only guess what they were after.
“It has just been chaotic all day, police up and down the road,” he said. “I just hope they catch him.”
Giorgio Derderian, 55, said he was holed up with his extended family in a two-family home, also on Arsenal Street.
Just after midnight, he was awakened by staccato gunfire. By Friday afternoon, the most noticeable sound was the beat of helicopters flying overhead.
“It is overwhelming,” Mr. Derderian said. “I can see a lot of reporters. There is a big car dealer and sniper shooters on top of the Lexus dealers. I can see right from here.”
Still, to find out what was going on, he and his family were glued to the television.
“I have to stay at home and just keep eating. We are a bunch of us, 10 of us,” he said. “We follow whatever the law requires, but we can see from the window. You never see things like this in your life.”
Stephen Quinn, 24, who also lives on Arsenal Street, said that when he was first awakened in the middle of the night, it was frightening, but as the day progressed, he settled into the strange rhythm.
“It has just been going on so long, we are becoming more accustomed to it,” he said. “We feel pretty safe because we have six police cars parked right out in front of our house.”
— MARC SANTORA AND CHRISTINE HAUSER
1:33 P.M. Slain Officer’s Family Is ‘Heartbroken’
The Boston Globe published a statement from the family of Sean Collier, 26, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer who was slain on Thursday night.
“We are heartbroken by the loss of our wonderful and caring son and brother, Sean Collier,” the Collier family said in a statement. “Our only solace is that Sean died bravely doing what he committed his life to — serving and protecting others. We are thankful for the outpouring of support and condolences offered by so many people. We are grieving his loss and ask that the media respect our privacy at this time.”
1:19 P.M. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Became U.S. Citizen in 2012
According to a government official, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev came to the United States in 2002 with his father and his mother on a regular visa and then applied for refugee status. Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the United States during the next year or so.
Dzhokhar, his father and his mother became United States citizens in September of last year, the official said. Tamerlan had applied for citizenship and was in the middle of the process.
— PETER BAKER
12:48 P.M. Suspects’ Aunt Insists They Are Innocent, CBC Reports
The aunt of the two suspects in the Boston bombings told Canada’s CBC News that she does not believe the two men were involved in the attack, the news organization’s Leslie MacKinnon reported.
The aunt, Maret Tsarnaeva, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no evidence other than pictures of the two young men walking on the street near the finish line.
The report said Ms. Tsarnaeva, who lives in Toronto, was contacted by CBC News by phone on Friday. It said she had not yet contacted her brother, the father of the two suspects. The report quoted her as saying:
My nephews cannot be part of this terrible, horrible act that was committed in the streets of Boston. I know these two nephews, smart boys, good boys. They have no motive for that. They have no ideas to be going to this kind of act. It’s just not the case. It cannot be true.
Ms. Tsarnaeva said she had not seen her nephews for five or six years but had spoken to the older of the two, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, two years ago when his daughter was born, and then again a year ago, CBC reported. She said that Tamerlan, who was killed in a shootout with the police early Friday, was married to a woman whom she described as a Christian, and that he had been staying home to take care of his daughter while his wife worked.
The CBC report said:
Tsarnaeva said she isn’t ready yet to believe Tamerlan is dead. She also said she spoke to someone at the F.B.I. Friday morning to tell them the two men are her nephews and that they are innocent.
— MICHAEL ROSTON
12:53 P.M. Police Searching Door to Door in Watertown
Col. Timothy P. Alben of the Massachusetts State Police said that the investigation was proceeding, but he would not go into detail.
Only minutes before he had come out to speak to reporters, he said, the authorities had developed new leads they were following up on.
“Things change quickly,” he said, speaking in Watertown, which has been the center of much of the police activity on Friday.
“We are progressing through this neighborhood, going door to door, street to street,” he said, adding that more than half of Watertown, which has a population of 32,000, had already been canvassed by law enforcement personnel.
— MARC SANTORA
12:37 P.M. Police Warn of ‘Controlled Explosion’ in Cambridge
The Massachusetts State Police said that there would be a “controlled explosion” on Norfolk Street in Cambridge later this afternoon. That is the location that police identified earlier today as being the possible home of the suspect.
The State Police said that the controlled explosion would take place to ensure the safety of the law enforcement officers at the scene, and that they were alerting people about the step so that they would not be alarmed should they hear an explosion in Cambridge.
The Watertown police chief said there had been a lot of heroic actions in the last few hours.
“I want to speak to the Watertown community,” he said. “You have done great. But we need some more time. You have to stay in your homes. Stay in place.”
— JENNIFER PRESTON AND MARC SANTORA
12:42 P.M. Amtrak Suspends New York-to-Boston Service
Amtrak has suspended service between New York City and Boston “at the request of local authorities and due to ongoing police activity.”
New York Penn Station will be the last stop for Northeast Corridor trains, Amtrak said in a statement, and Amtrak Downeaster trains will run on a modified schedule and will not run to Boston.
The full statement:
At the request of local authorities, and due to ongoing police activity, Amtrak Acela Express and Northeast Regional service remains suspended indefinitely in the Boston area. Northeast Corridor trains are terminating at New York Penn Station.
Amtrak Downeaster continues to operate a modified schedule with no service to Boston.
Amtrak service is operating normally between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. The Springfield Shuttle between New Haven, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., is also operating on a normal schedule.
A decision about restoration of service into the Boston area will be made when local authorities inform us operations can resume.
Amtrak Police continue to coordinate with other law enforcement agencies.
Additional updates will be provided throughout the day.
— LIAM STACK
12:33 P.M. Governor Patrick Says People Should Remain Indoors
Gov. Deval Patrick thanked members of the public for remaining inside and said, “It is important that folks remain indoors.”
“Keep the doors locked,” he said.
He said that people should open the door only for a uniformed police officer.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
12:31 P.M. Military Helicopters Hover Over Watertown
Military helicopters touched down in Watertown, Mass., on Friday afternoon as residents of the Boston area remained on lockdown while the manhunt for the Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continued.
Jonathan Hall, a television news reporter for WDHD in Boston, posted a photograph to Twitter that shows a helicopter flying low overhead.
Erick Weber, an anchor on New England Cable News, also posted an update to Twitter showing helicopters flying low over Watertown. He reported that the helicopters were “hovering over Watertown mall.” He also reported an armored vehicle in front of the mall.
– Liam Stack
12:00 P.M. Uncle of Suspect Calls on Nephew to Surrender
Speaking to a scrum of reporters on Friday morning, Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the wanted suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, called on his nephew to surrender in an interview broadcast by NBC.
— ROBERT MACKEY
11:57 A.M. F.B.I. Releases New Wanted Poster of Suspect
11:35 A.M. Cambridge Police Halt Twitter; Suspect May Be Watching
The Cambridge Police Department said it was pausing in the release of information on its Twitter feed in case the suspect being sought by the police was doing what any other person who wanted information about the search for him was doing: monitoring social media.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
11:37 A.M. Chechen Leader Notes Suspects Were Raised in U.S.
Responding to news that the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were young Chechen refugees who had lived in the United States for several years, Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov, turned to Instagram to defend the honor of his nation.
In a comment posted on his frequently updated account on the social network, Mr. Kadyrov said that any attempt to connect the act of terrorism to Chechnya would be “in vain.”
As The Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Miriam Elder noted, the former warlord argued that because the brothers “grew up in the United States, their views and beliefs were formed there.”
Mr. Kadyrov, who has been accused of using torture, kidnapping and murder to rule Chechnya, added: “It is necessary to seek the roots of evil in America.”
— ROBERT MACKEY
11:20 A.M. Retired Teacher Says Suspect Has ‘Heart of Gold’
Larry Aaronson, a retired social studies teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, said he knew Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who graduated from the school last year. Mr. Aaronson lives on Norfolk Street, on the Cambridge-Somerville border, a few houses away from the Tsarnaevs.
Mr. Aaronson said that even though he was retired, he still spent a lot of time at the school, taking pictures of events.
“He was a very photogenic kid,” he said of Dzhokhar. “He had a heart of gold.”
“He told me he was from Chechnya and I asked him what that was like and he never expressed any bitterness toward Russia or his situation,” Mr. Aaronson said.
“This comes as a total shock,” he said. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”
He said he always thought of terrorism as something that happened somewhere else.
“This war is coming home,” he said.
— EMILY S. RUEB
11:19 A.M. Slain Officer Identified as 26-Year-Old Sean Collier
A photograph and the name of the officer killed last night have been released. As our colleagues report from Boston, the police received reports that Sean Collier, a campus security officer at M.I.T., had been shot while he sat in his police cruiser.
He was found with multiple gunshot wounds, according to a statement issued by the acting Middlesex County district attorney, Michael Pelgro; Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas; and the M.I.T. police chief, John DiFava. The officer was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The statement said that the officer had been with the M.I.T. police since January 2012 and before that was a civilian employee with the Somerville Police Department.
M.I.T. reported in a statement that Officer Collier was single and a native of Wilmington, Mass.
“Sean was one of these guys who really looked at police work as a calling,” Chief DiFava said. “He was born to be a police officer.”
The Boston Globe reported that Officer Collier lived in a three-story house in Somerville.
The Boston Globe story said, in part:
Through tears, his roommate — who trained with Collier at the police academy and did not provide his name — said Collier was “awesome,” his only fault that was he was too brave.
“He was the guy who went to help,” his roommate said. “The best guy got shot down … ”
His trainer at the Boston Sports Club in Davis Square, Chrissy, said she first met Collier as a client. They quickly became friends outside the gym, too — they both liked country music and planned to attend a concert together this summer.
Chrissy said Collier protected everyone around him. When she was assaulted in the fall of 2011, she had to report to the Somerville police station to identify suspects in a lineup. She was upset and scared, but to her surprise, when she arrived at the station, Collier greeted her at the front desk and then stayed with her throughout the process.
“He sat with me while I was waiting to go in for the lineup and drove me home after to make sure I was okay,” Chrissy said, saying his presence helped her get through that day and the days that followed.
Holly Dixon, whose 28-year-old son, Travis, was Sean’s roommate in Somerville, said Collier loved camping and the outdoors and was incredibly generous.
“He is one of the nicest guys you can imagine, funny, everybody liked him. He hoped to be a Somerville police officer,” said Ms. Dixon. “He was a nice, nice kid, who would do anything for you,” she said.
She said her son, Travis, worked at Boston College as a police officer, similar to what Sean did at M.I.T., and was able to then get on the force in Wellesley six months ago — a route that Sean hoped to follow to the Somerville force.
The officer was also eulogized on a Web site dedicated to slain law enforcement personnel.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
11:04 A.M. Amtrak Service Suspended Indefinitely in Boston Area
Amtrak released the following statement:
At the request of local authorities, and due to ongoing police activity, Amtrak Acela Express and Northeast Regional service is suspended indefinitely between Providence, R.I., and Boston. Amtrak Downeaster is operating a modified schedule with no service to Boston. Amtrak service is operating normally between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York. The Springfield Shuttle between New Haven, Conn., and Springfield, Mass., is also operating on a normal schedule. A decision about restoration of service into the Boston area will be made when local authorities inform us operations can resume. Amtrak Police continue to coordinate with other law enforcement agencies. Additional updates will be provided throughout the day.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
10:52 A.M. SWAT Teams Converge on Watertown Street
Dozens of officers converged on Arsenal Street in Watertown with guns drawn.
“For your safety, you need to move back,” the police shouted to reporters as they surged in force into the area, which already had a large police presence.
Residents reported a tense scene, with snipers on rooftops, heavily armed law enforcement officials in armored trucks and police swarming the streets.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
10:42 A.M. Mass. General Gives Details About Operating in Lockdown
Massachusetts General Hospital explained in a statement how it was reconciling the lockdown order by the authorities with the need for people to get to and from the hospital freely. Though it gave details of access, it also emphasized that there were no specific threats to the hospital itself.
Access to the MGH has been restricted to the Main (White) Entrance. Only staff with an MGH ID are allowed to enter the hospital at this time. In the Charlestown Navy Yard, Buildings 62 and 114 are closed. Entrance to Building 149 is restricted to the main entrance for staff with an MGH ID.
Patients who are ready for discharge are advised to remain at the hospital. Many have already been taken to Tea Leaves and Coffee Beans on the ground floor of the Wang Building. The Blum Center has been set up as a second site and is now receiving patients and families. We will set up a third site if needed.
All outpatient appointments on the main campus that had been scheduled for any time after noon today have been canceled. Ambulatory staff who are currently at the hospital are requested to remain on site. All MGH community health care centers are closed. MassGeneral West is closed. Chelsea Urgent Care is open. The MassGeneral/North Shore Center for Outpatient Care is open.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
10:40 A.M. Police Locate the Gray Honda They Were Looking For
The police have located a gray Honda CR-V with Massachusetts plates that they had been looking for in Cambridge.
Law enforcement authorities in Massachusetts and Connecticut had been told to be on the lookout for a gray Honda that was “possibly” occupied by the suspect.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
10:33 A.M. Bomb Squad Arrives at Cambridge’s Norfolk Street
Bomb squad experts have arrived to assist in the operation along Norfolk Street in Cambridge, reinforcing the heavy police presence in the area as they continue their search for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. Parts of the street and other areas of Cambridge are in lockdown as the authorities intensify the manhunt.
— JOHN ELIGON
10:07 A.M. Scene Near Suspects’ Home in Cambridge
Shortly before 8 a.m. on Friday, police officers began blocking off Norfolk Street in Cambridge, near Inman Square, where the suspects reportedly lived.
The Boston Globe reported that the police took a woman out of an apartment in the middle of the block, and that she appeared to be resisting the officers.
The Cambridge police also escorted residents from their homes and “scoured the area around the suspects’ apartment.”
Roughly a half dozen F.B.I. agents toting automatic weapons pulled up to the intersection of Norfolk Street and Cambridge Street just before 8:45 a.m. Activity suddenly increased at the intersection after the F.B.I. agents pulled up. Numerous law enforcement vehicles parked in the intersection and along the street. Black law enforcement vehicles with tinted windows were parked along Norfolk Street with their lights flashing. A man who appeared to be handcuffed was also taken from the apartment.
In the nearby Central Square section of Cambridge, the lockdown ordered by the authorities for Cambridge, Boston and nearby towns has meant empty streets.
Bike Safe Boston shared images on its Twitter feed.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
10:08 A.M. Police Search Train in Connecticut
The manhunt has not been limited to the Boston area, but has stretched south to Connecticut. The authorities in Boston notified transit police officials that there was a possibility the suspect had boarded the last Amtrak train from Boston bound for New York City in the early morning hours, according to an official with knowledge of the matter.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, which has authority over the track in New York and Connecticut, along with police from Norwalk, Conn., stopped the train between the East Norwalk and Westport, Conn., stations, and the Norwalk Police Department’s SWAT team swept the train but did not find the suspect, the official said. While the authorities believe it was unlikely he was aboard, they were reviewing video surveillance footage from the stations in Providence, New Haven and New London, to make sure the suspect did not get off before the train was stopped and searched.
At least one Metro-North train, operated by the M.T.A. on the same tracks over which Amtrak travels, was also stopped by the Westport Police for reasons that were unclear, the official said.
— WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
9:56 A.M. Photo Essay Offers Clues on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Life
“Will Box for Passport,” a photo essay posted online by a photographer named Johannes Hirn, appears to offer clues about the life of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in Monday’s Boston Marathon attack who was killed after a police chase early Friday.
The 15 photographs, showing the refugee in a boxing ring at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts center in Boston, can be viewed as a slide show with captions or one by one from a gallery.
According to the photo captions, Mr. Tsarnaev was a refugee from Chechnya who had fled the conflict there with his family in the early 1990s, first for Kazakhstan and then for the United States. Even though he had been living in the United States for five years by the time the images of him in the gym were taken, and he said he hoped to represent his adopted country in the Olympics, he told the photographer: “I don’t have a single American friend. I don’t understand them.”
The essay showed him training for a Golden Gloves heavyweight boxing competition in Salt Lake City, which hosted the tournament in 2009. He told the photographer that he hoped to do well enough to be selected for the United States Olympic team and get an American passport. One caption, for a photograph showing him in front of an American flag in the gym, read: “Unless his native Chechnya becomes independent, Tamerlan says, he would rather compete for the United States than for Russia.”
The images were first published in print in a 2010 issue of The Comment, the graduate student magazine of Boston University’s College of Communication. Daniel Essrow, a graphic designer who studied at the school, said that he had done the layout for the photo essay when it was published in print and uploaded an image of the magazine to Twitter.
Mr. Tsarnaev also described himself at the time as a “very religious,” if newly devout, Muslim: “Tamerlan says he doesn’t smoke or drink anymore. ‘God said no alcohol.’ A Muslim, he says, ‘There are no values anymore,’ and worries that ‘people can’t control themselves.’ ” He also mentioned a half-Portuguese, half-Italian girlfriend who had converted to Islam.
The photographer, who studied journalism at Boston University from 2008 to 2010, is currently based in England and has not yet responded to an interview request.
— ROBERT MACKEY
9:28 A.M. An Interview With an Uncle of the Suspects
WBZ-TV, a CBS News affiliate in Boston, broadcast a telephone interview with Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. During the interview, Mr. Tsarni learned for the first time that his nephew Tamerlan had been killed. At an earlier stage of the conversation, he called the young man “a loser.”
— JENNIFER PRESTON AND ROBERT MACKEY
9:43 A.M. Cambridge Police Find No Threat in Reported Packages
The Cambridge police said they had investigated and cleared reports of suspicious packages on at least four streets in the city.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
9:30 A.M. A.P.: Suspects’ Father Calls Son a ‘True Angel’
The father of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing spoke to The Associated Press on Friday. The man, identified as Anzor Tsarnaev, spoke to the news agency from the Russian city of Makhachkala about his son, Dzhokhar, who is being sought by the police. The A.P. reported that Mr. Tsarnaev referred to his son as a smart and accomplished young man.
My son is a true angel. Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here.
— CHRISTINE HAUSER
9:20 A.M. The Scene in Watertown
After a night of high drama and chaos, with gunshots and explosions piercing the nighttime calm, the small suburban community of Watertown found itself an odd combination of ghost town and police state on Friday morning.
Residents started getting calls from the police shortly after 2 a.m., telling them to lock their doors, stay in their houses and only go out if directed by a law enforcement officer.
“I got a call at 2:40 a.m., saying: ‘This is the police department calling. We have an emergency and we need you to stay in your home,’ ” an 82-year-old woman said in a phone interview.
“I just see more and more police cars,” she said. She lives on Mount Auburn Street, which she said was a few minutes away from where the standoff with the police took place.
Most of the overnight activity — which included a police chase, gun battles and explosions — took place on School Street and the streets that run off School Street, residents said.
However, because they were locked in their homes, people had a limited view, seeing only what they could glimpse out of parted curtains.
One resident who declined to give her name said her husband saw someone in a hoodie dash across her yard shortly after the police called and told them to stay indoors.
The couple immediately called the authorities to tell them what they had seen.
Like the people outside Watertown, they were relying on television to find out what was happening just outside their own doors. On Friday morning, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick extended the “shelter in place” order, telling people to remain behind closed doors, to the entire city of Boston and the neighboring towns of Watertown, including Newton, Waltham, Belmont and Cambridge.
In Watertown, helicopters circled overhead as just about every stripe of law enforcement canvassed the community of about 32,000.
The police scanner buzzed with activity, but at the area where media representatives were cordoned off, on the edge of town, the authorities declined to comment on what might be happening within the lockdown area.
The situation was so fraught that CNN decided to show images from Watertown only on a tape delay.
— MARC SANTORA AND JESS BIDGOOD
8:54 A.M. Major Police Activity in Watertown
Police were staging a major operation on Arsenal Street in Watertown, where residents have been ordered to shelter in place and not answer their doors since early this morning, after a gun battle in Cambridge with suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing.
In addition to the police and SWAT teams, heavily armored vehicles are assembling on Arsenal Street.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
8:56 A.M. Police Issue Warning to Media
— JENNIFER PRESTON
8:45 A.M. Facebook Page Shows Suspect With Military Helmet
A Facebook page for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is reported to show a profile photo of a young man in a military helmet, holding what appears to be an assault weapon and taking a drag on a cigarette. An announcement from the city of Cambridge, Mass., listed a person by that name as a recipient of a $2,500 college scholarship in 2011, one of about 35 scholarships given to local high school graduates.
(Note: An earlier version of this update appeared with a stray editing note.)
8:31 A.M. Boston Police Release New Photo of Suspect
— JENNIFER PRESTON
8:29 A.M. F.A.A.: Airspace Over Watertown Closed; Logan Open
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the airspace over Watertown has been closed. Logan Airport, however, remains open.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
8:21 A.M. Boston Police Advise Residents to Lock Doors
Ed Davis, the Boston police commissioner, said that new information had come in early Friday morning that had caused police to widen the area they were locking down. However, he did not provide specific information.
Watertown residents have been told to shelter in place since early Friday morning. The police commissioner and Gov. Deval Patrick extended the order to Cambridge, Waltham, Newton and Belmont. Residents have been told to stay at home with their doors locked.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
8:04 A.M. Governor Extends ‘Shelter in Place’ to Boston
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick asks people to shelter in place in Boston and in the following towns: Watertown, Cambridge, Waltham, Newton and Belmont.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
The authorities are focusing their investigation on an area of Norfolk Street and are shutting down the street in their search for the second suspect. Dave Procopio, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman, said of an address, 410 Norfolk Street, “There’s a location where we are conducting part of this investigation, a particularly sensitive part right now and one that might be dangerous.”
“We’re shutting the street down,” he added. “There’s a possibility that the suspect might be there. We don’t know for sure.”
— JENNIFER PRESTON
7:30 A.M. Suspects Believed to Have Lived in Cambridge, Mass.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
7:23 A.M. Surviving Suspect Is Named
Our colleagues report from Boston that the surviving suspect was identified as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., according to a law enforcement official. Investigators say they believe that both of the suspects were Chechens.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
7:26 A.M. Tsarnaev Brothers Identified as Suspects
A law enforcement official identified the two suspects as brothers:
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26
— JENNIFER PRESTON
7:17 A.M. Boston-Area Universities Closed
The Associated Press reports that many Boston-area universities have canceled classes for the day, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Harvard University, Emerson College and Boston College.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
7:00 A.M. Reports: Suspects Were Brothers
News reports have started to provide details about the suspects, but without naming or citing their sources. The Associated Press said that they were from a Russian region near Chechnya and had lived in the United States for at least a year. NBC News reported that they were 19 and 20 years old.
— JENNIFER PRESTON
6:46 A.M. Stranded Commuters Urged to Go Home
The shutdown of mass transit left people stranded at stops and stations across eastern Massachusetts, The Boston Globe reported.
“People at bus or subway stations, we are asking them to go home,’’ said Kurt Schwartz, who leads the state’s homeland security department, at a 6 a.m. news conference. “We do not want people congregating and waiting for the system to come back on.’’
6:44 A.M. Amtrak Suspends Trains Between Boston and Providence
Amtrak said that because of the police activity, train service is temporarily suspended between Boston and Providence, R.I.
6:40 A.M. A Watertown Resident Awakens to Explosions
Christine Yajko, a Watertown resident, told The Associated Press that she was awakened at about 1:30 a.m. by a loud noise. She began to walk to her kitchen and then heard gunfire.
“I heard the explosion, so I stepped back from that area, then I went back out and heard a second one,” she said. “It was very loud. It shook the house a little.”
She said a police officer later knocked on her door, told her there was an undetonated improvised explosive device in the street and warned her to stay away from the windows.
6:32 A.M. ‘White-Capped’ Suspect Is Still Sought
“What we are looking for right now is a suspect consistent with suspect No. 2, the white-capped individual who was involved in Monday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon,” Col. Tim Alben of the Massachusetts State Police was quoted as saying.
6:23 A.M. Man Treated in Hospital With Gunshot Wounds
Doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston said they had treated a man with a possible blast injury and multiple gunshot wounds, according to The Associated Press. They would not say if the patient they treated, who came in with police, was the suspect wearing a black hat in marathon surveillance footage.
6:20 A.M. President Obama Briefed on Boston Developments
President Obama was briefed overnight by a counterterrorism aide, a White House official told wire services.
6:11 A.M. Belmont Residents Should Also Stay Indoors
The authorities said people in Belmont, near Watertown, should also stay at home.
“We believe these are the same individuals that were responsible for the bombing on Monday at the Boston Marathon,” said Col. Tim Alben of the Massachusetts State Police. “We believe that they’re responsible for the death of an M.I.T. police officer and the shooting of an M.B.T.A. officer.”
6:04 A.M. Boston Transportation Is Shut Down
At 5:45 a.m., Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts suspended service on all public transit services in the M.B.T.A. system in Boston. Vehicle traffic was also suspended in and out of Watertown, the Boston police said. The authorities asked all residents of Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Allston-Brighton and Cambridge to stay home and indoors.
“This situation is grave,” said Col. Tim Alben of the Massachusetts State Police. “We are here to protect public safety.”
— KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
An earlier version of this live blog misspelled, in one instance, the surname of a Massachusetts State Police official. He is Col. Tim Alben, not Albens. It also misstated when Dr. David Schoenfeld spoke to The Times. It was Friday afternoon, not Thursday afternoon.