Sean Collier, 26, the MIT police officer killed last night in the first link in the chain of events that lead us to this on-going chase, little more than 12 hours ago.
Over night, as I was monitoring events and trying to report what we could confirm in the editor’s blog, I was so focused on phone reporting, monitoring twitter and monitoring police scanners, that I oddly neglected what has always been one of TPM’s core ways of collecting information, our emails from you. I followed the situation from the first alert about the shooting at MIT until about 6 AM when I turned things over to the rest of the team and got a few hours of sleep. I’d missed reports like this one from TPM Reader CM sent in at 1:36 AM last night …
I’m a Prime subscriber and a long-time reader. I live on Dexter Ave. in Watertown, Mass. where we just experienced what I can only describe as war.
More info on Dzhokar Tsarnaev, Suspect #2, who remains at large, from his page on a Russian social media site (via the AP): He graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mass., in 2011.
Here’s a helpful timeline to catch you up on overnight events in the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt.
If you’re just waking up, it’s a been a surreal night of chaos and violence north of Boston which, according to latest reports, has ended with one of the two Boston marathon suspects dead and another (apparently the so-called suspect number two with the white cap) still at large.
It began with the murder of a MIT police officer at the edge of the MIT campus just before 11 PM Thursday night. That led to a carjacking which took police on a chase into the neighboring town of Watertown. For hours it was unclear just what was happening and whether it had anything to do with the bombing investigation, though as events proceeded it became increasingly difficult to imagine they were not.
Listening to police scanners from midnight until roughly 1 AM was a surreal experience and certainly a terrifying one for those involved as law enforcement officers struggled to make sense of a chaotic situation, engaged in shootouts and were targeted with explosives by fleeing suspects. Soon scores of police from different departments and federal agencies were converging on Watertown. Dynamite, hand grenades, pipe bombs were the phrases tossed out live over police scanners as the events unfolded, though all that seems certain is that there were explosives of some sort. Police held a press conference a short time ago, the details of which are here.
Police seemed to be waiting for daybreak to intensify the search for the so-called suspect number two.
Continue to treat everything as tentative. But local TV station WCVB is reporting that the two suspects in tonight’s fire fight are the marathon bomb suspects, that one has been killed (suspect #1) and that the other remains at large (suspect #2). (Other news sources say only that the first suspect is in custody.) Federal authorities are still not confirming this identification. But they seem to be edging closer toward doing so.
A lot has happened in the last half hour. As noted before, the Globe reported that one of the two marathon suspects has been taken into custody in the Watertown shoot out. The FBI was not ready to confirm the connection. But reports are starting to come out of local TV reports that suggest that police at least believe that they are pursuing the marathon bombing suspects. WCVB.com is saying there’s a “strong link” between the shoot out tonight and the bombing.
Stepping back for a moment, what’s clear is that law enforcement in many cases is speaking with the press in the context of a massive and frequently violent manhunt. So there’s a mix of operational assumptions and what anyone can confirm in any meaningful sense. But it does seem increasingly clear that law enforcement is treating this as all part of the same story.
We’ve been down this road before. And with all the chaos outside Boston tonight, I wouldn’t be certain of anything. But the Boston Globe is reporting that police have one marathon bombing suspect in custody and are searching for a second in Watertown. Presumably this makes it official that the bombings and this situation outside Boston tonight are connected. But again, treat everything as tentative. The Globe also reported the non-arrest on Wednesday.
Late Update – 2:37 PM: The Globe is obviously an august paper. But their certainty on this seems well out in front of what others seem to know. I’d remain cautious about this point.
Late Update – 2:42 PM: Here’s the Globe’s piece saying a marathon suspect is in custody. Same caution.
Late Update – 2:47 PM: We’ve spoken to the FBI. They won’t confirm that these are marathon bombing suspects.