Watertown, Mass., remained locked down in late afternoon as police conducting conducted a painstaking search of a 20-block area of Watertown that began in the wee hours after Tsarnaev, 19, and his older brother, Tamerlan, 26, allegedly engaged late Thursday in a shootout with police that left Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead.
Police said the brothers shot and killed Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26, of Somerville, and critically wounded Massachusetts Bay Area Transit officer Richard Donahue Jr., 33. Donahue was reported in stable condition following surgery.
Mass transit in the Boston area was suspended for the day as was Amtrak service between Boston and New York. Classes were canceled at colleges and universities in the area. The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth campus was evacuated after authorities determined Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student there.
The Boston Globe reported an explosive trigger was found on Tamerlan’s body, which exhibited “blast wounds,” when it was examined at the morgue, leading authorities to speculate the remaining suspect was wearing an explosive vest.
Before the shootout, police said the suspects tossed a pressure cooker bomb at their pursuers — similar to the devices that exploded Monday at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and killing more than 170.
WCVB-TV, Boston, said two vehicles involved in the shootout were towed from the area after undetonated components were removed from them.
Boston media reported Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became a U.S. citizen last Sept. 11.
Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the suspects, urged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to surrender “and ask for forgiveness.”
Asked about a possible reason for the bombings, Tsarni said his nephews were “losers” for bringing about the atrocity and they apparently had a “hatred for those who were able to settle themselves.”
Tsarni, who said his family was ethnic Chechen and Muslim, said his nephews “put a shame on our family. He put a shame on entire Chechen ethnicity.”
NBC News reported counterterrorism officials were looking into the possibility the Tsarnaev brothers were linked to the Islamic Jihad Union of central Asia, a terrorist group. NBC New York said it has obtained travel records indicating Tamerlan Tsarnaev went to Russia from Jan. 12-July 17, 2012.
The men’s father, Anzor Tsarnaev, told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from his home in Dagestan he does not believe his sons were involved in the events.
“It is a provocation of the special services who went after them because my sons are Muslims and don’t have anyone in America to protect them,” said the elder Tsarnaev, adding his boys had no training in handling firearms or explosives.
“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 men’s sister, who lives in West New York, N.J., and whose name was withheld, told The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger.
She said she never would have expected her brothers to be involved in such violence.
After their photos were released by the FBI Thursday, the brothers carjacked a Mercedes SUV and told the driver they were behind Monday’s attack and had just killed a campus security officer, a source told NBC News. The driver was released unhurt.
Police said they believe Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has a laptop and was communicating via social media, CNN reported.
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