Update 1:22 p.m. Stephanie Garry woke up this morning to a call from her mom, who lives in Gainesville, telling her about the manhunt that was taking place near her home in Massachusetts.
When the UF alumna started looking at the news, she saw that the suspect's house was on the street right next to hers in Cambridge.
This is what she had to say:
“I haven’t seen anything on my street but the road is definitely blockaded by police and there have been police patrolling up and down the street.” “The most exciting thing that’s happened, is that early this morning I did hear an explosion. I think it must have been the police detonating something they found in the house, but I don’t have any conformation of that.” “There are actually quite a few spectators and some people are just sort of going about their day as usual. The public transportation system is shut down here and so that really stops a lot of business, but people don’t seem too scared.” "Really everything is fine. I have a lot of confidence in the police. I feel very fortunate to live in a place where these kinds of incidents are the exception not a rule and that we have a wonderful a police force that’s doing its job to protect us." "I really feel like this will all be resolved soon and we will be able to get back to our normal lives."
WUFT's Chip Skambis spoke with Garry this morning:
Update 12:09 p.m. MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md. (AP) — The uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects urged one of his nephews to turn himself in Friday, saying he had brought shame to the family and the entire Chechnyan ethnicity.
"Yes, we're ashamed. They're the children of my brother," Ruslan Tsarni told a throng of reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md.
The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and family members as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, brothers from a Russian region near Chechnya. 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, escaped. He was seen wearing a white, backward baseball cap in the images from Monday's deadly bombing at the marathon finish line.
"Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness," Tsarni said.
Tsarni called his nephews "losers" and said his family had not seen them since December 2005. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade.
Tsarni said his brother left the U.S. and he had not talked to him since 2009.
Chechnya has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings.
Tsarni said vehemently that Chechnya had nothing to do with the attack. He said his nephews had struggled to settle themselves in the U.S. and ended up "thereby just hating everyone."
Original Post:Major developments overnight in the Boston Marathon bombing case. Here is how our Boston-based public media sister station WBUR is summarizing the events in their live blog:
– After 10 p.m. last night, a robbery took place at a 7-Eleven in Cambridge – After that, an MIT police officer was fatally shot, allegedly by the two marathon suspects – There was a carjacking in Cambridge involving the two suspects taking a Mercedes SUV – The car was discovered by police in Watertown, which led to an exchange of gunfire – During the chase, explosive devices were reportedly thrown from the suspects' car – During the exchange, one suspect was killed – Also during the exchange of gunfire, an MBTA officer was shot and is in critical condition – The second suspect fled and is at-large – There's an active search for the suspect who fled, the FBI's bombing "white hat suspect"
The Associated Press has quoted sources identifying the suspects as two men from the Russian region of Chechnya, who have been living in the U.S. for nearly a year. AP has also reported the identity of the surviving Boston bomb suspect as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass.
Follow @WUFTNews for latest developments
https://twitter.com/Boston_Police/status/325184049306009601
https://twitter.com/Boston_Police/status/325224387731152897
Article from the Associated Press:
WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) — Two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing killed an MIT police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight and threw explosive devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of them dead and another still at large Friday, authorities said as the manhunt intensified for a young man described as a dangerous terrorist.
In Boston, still on edge over the attack on the marathon, and its western suburbs, authorities suspended mass transit and urged people to stay indoors as they searched for a man seen wearing a white baseball cap on surveillance footage from Monday's deadly bombing at the marathon finish line.
"We believe this man to be a terrorist," said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. "We believe this to be a man who's come here to kill people."
Authorities urged residents in Watertown, Newton, Arlington, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge and the Allston-Brighton neighborhoods of Boston to stay indoors. At least a quarter of a million people live in those suburbs. All mass transit was shut down, and businesses were asked not to open Friday. People waiting at bus and subway stops were told to go home.
All modes of public transportation were shut down, including buses, subways, trolleys, commuter rail and boats, said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
The suspects' clashes with police began only a few hours after the FBI released photos and videos of the two young men, who were seen carrying backpacks as they mingled among marathon revelers. The bombings on Monday killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, and authorities revealed the images to enlist the public's help finding the suspects.
The images released by the FBI depict two young men, each wearing a baseball cap, walking one behind the other near the finish line. Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston, said the suspect in the white hat was seen setting down a bag at the site of the second of two deadly explosions.
Authorities said surveillance tape recorded late Thursday showed the suspect known for the white hat during a robbery of a convenience store in Cambridge, near the campus of MIT, where a university police officer was killed while responding to a report of a disturbance, said State Police Col Timothy Alben. The officer died of multiple gunshot wounds.
From there, authorities say, the two men carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz, keeping him with them in the car for half an hour before releasing him at a gas station in Cambridge. The man was not injured.
The search for the vehicle led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer was seriously injured during the chase, authorities said.
In Watertown, witnesses reported hearing multiple gunshots and explosions at about 1 a.m. Friday. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents were in the neighborhood and a helicopter circled overhead.
Watertown resident Christine Yajko said she was awakened at about 1:30 a.m. by a loud noise, began to walk to her kitchen and 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 and told her there was an undetonated improvised explosive device in the street and warned her to stay away from the windows.
"It was on the street, right near our kitchen window," she said.
Yajko said she never saw the suspect who was on the loose and didn't realize the violence was related to the marathon bombings until she turned on the TV and began watching what was happening outside her side door.
State police spokesman David Procopio said, "The incident in Watertown did involve what we believe to be explosive devices possibly, potentially, being used against the police officers."
Boston cab driver Imran Saif said he was standing on a street corner at a police barricade across from a diner when he heard an explosion.
"I heard a loud boom and then a rapid succession of pop, pop, pop," he said. "It sounded like automatic weapons. And then I heard the second explosion."
He said he could smell something burning and advanced to check it out but area residents at their windows yelled at him, "Hey, it's gunfire! Don't go that way!"
Doctors at a Boston hospital where a suspect in the marathon bombings was taken and later died are saying they treated a man with a possible blast injury and multiple gunshot wounds.
MIT said right after the 10:30 p.m. shooting that police were sweeping the campus in Cambridge and urged people to remain indoors. They urged people urged to stay away from the Stata Center, a mixed-use building with faculty offices, classrooms and a common area.
The suspects' images were released hours after President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended an interfaith service in Boston to remember the dead and the wounded.
At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Obama saluted the resolve of the people of Boston and mocked the bombers as "these small, stunted individuals who would destroy instead of build and think somehow that makes them important."
"We will find you," he warned.