Reported by: RAVI SOMAIYA
Update: Police have now released the names of the suspects responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon blast and both are believed to be Checnen citizens. The deceased suspect ultimately died of his injuries as a result of a early morning police shootout. The dead man’s name is 26 year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The other man being sort by the police has been positively identified as his 19 year old brother Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. Both were believed to be residents of Massachusetts.
One of two suspects wanted in Monday’s deadly Boston marathon bombing was killed early Friday in a violent standoff with the police in a quiet residential neighborhood just west of Boston. The second suspect remains at large following what authorities described as a deadly crime spree that left one police officer dead and another seriously wounded.
One suspect, seen in pictures released Thursday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation wearing a black hat, had been shot , said Timothy P. Alben of the Masschusetts State Police in a press conference early Friday morning. Authorities later confirmed that he had died. The other suspect, pictured in a white hat, was at large, likely extremely dangerous and the subject of a sweeping manhunt in Watertown, a quiet residential community near Boston.
The marathon bombing killed three and wounded more than 170. It seemed early on Friday as though it was the first in a series of violent crimes perpetrated by the two young men in the Boston area this week.
Police confirmed that, at around 10:30 p.m. there had been a robbery at a 7/11 store in Central Square, Cambridge, apparently by the white-hatted suspect.
Shortly afterward, a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was shot and killed while responding to a suspicious incident. Police chased the two suspects, apparently in a black Mercedes SUV, to Watertown, where two residents of Laurel Street said they heard what sounded like firecrackers going off shortly before midnight. When they looked out of their windows, they saw the two young men taking cover behind the black Mercedes, in a shootout with dozens of police about 70 yards away. A transit police officer was shot, said a police spokesman, Dave Procopio, and was in serious condition.
A Watertown resident, Andrew Kitzenberg, 29, said he looked out his third-floor window to see two young men of slight build in jackets engaged in “constant gunfire” with police officers. A police SUV “drove towards the shooters,” he said, and was shot at until it was severely damaged. It rolled out of control, Mr. Kitzenberg said, and crashed into two cars in his driveway.
The two shooters, he said, had a large, unwieldy bomb that he said looked “like a pressure cooker.”
“They lit it, still in the middle of the gunfire, and threw it. But it went 20 yards at most.” It exploded, he said, and one of the two men ran toward the gathered police officers. He was tackled, but it was not clear if he was shot, Mr. Kitzenberg said.
The explosions, said another resident, Loretta Kehayias, 65, “lit up the whole house. I screamed. I’ve never seen anything like this, never, never, never.”
Meanwhile, the other young man, said Mr. Kitzenberg, got back into the SUV, turned it toward officers and “put the pedal to the metal.” The car “went right through the cops, broke right through and continued west.”
The two men left “a few backpacks right by the car, and there is a bomb robot out there now.” Police had told residents to stay away from their windows, he said.
At least two people, one of whom appeared to be a police officer and the other a man in handcuffs were taken from the scene in ambulances, said a Dexter Street resident who declined to give his name.
Check back with Hip Hop Enquirer as more details unfold about this senseless crime.
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