Boston bombingSecond suspect eludes dragnet as Boston remains locked down

Published 19 April 2013

The second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, 19-year old Dzokhar Tsarnaev, has so far managed to elude a massive dragnet, which began shortly after midnight. The streets of Boston and many of its suburbs remain empty, as residents were told to stay home, schools and businesses were closed, and public transportation and taxis were not in operation.

The second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, 19-year old Dzokhar Tsarnaev, has so far managed to elude a massive dragnet, which began shortly after midnight.

The streets of Boston and many of its suburbs remain empty, as residents were told to stay home, schools and businesses were closed, and public transportation and taxis were not in operation.

The main developments of the day:

The suspects’ family
Family relatives of the two suspected bombers offered different views.

  • The father’s brother expressed outrage and remorse, saying the two brothers brought shame on the family and the Chechen community.
  • The suspects’ 22-year-old sister, Ailina Tsarnaev, who lives in West New York, turned over her computer to the FBI. Speaking to reporters, she expressed her shock at what her brothers are alleged to have done.

The suspects’ father, mother, and one of the suspects’ sisters were defiant, denying any involvement of the two brothers in the crime, and implying that there was a U.S. government conspiracy to frame the two brothers and implicate them in a crime they did not commit.

  • The father, interviewed in Dagastan where he now lives, told Russian TV that his sons were “framed” and that the policemen who shot and killed his older son were “cowards.”
  • The suspects’ mother told CNN that she does not believe her sons could have perpetrated the crime on Monday.
  • The older of the suspects’ two sisters, 24-year old Bella, who said she had legal training, told CNN that, so far, she has not seen any evidence connecting her brothers to Monday’s bombing. She said that it was easy for law enforcement to pick up images of anybody who happened to be standing on the sidewalk on Boylston Street Monday afternoon, place circles around the images to highlight them, and announce that the people in the circles were the suspects.

The dead suspect
The older brother, 26-year old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed around 1:30 a.m. after police identified the Mercedes SUV the two suspects had hijacked earlier from a driver on Third Street in Cambridge. The suspects told the driver that they were the Marathon bombers, but allowed him to run away. He called the police to give a description of his SUV. The police was also helped by the anti-theft tracking device which the driver had activated before escaping his car. The police gave chase, trying to shoot out the SUV’s tires. While the SUV was speeding away, the older brother, who was in the