×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

Boston Marathon blasts: Investigators eye ‘range of suspects and motives’

News
Investigators said their hunt for suspects and a motive in the attack on the Boston Marathon was “wide open” and disclosed the first details about the two bombs.

Investigators said their hunt for suspects and a motive in the attack on the Boston Marathon was “wide open” and disclosed the first details about the two bombs — explosives housed in metal containers, concealed in bags and packed with tiny nails to maximize the carnage.

Report by NBC News Online

The lead investigator for the FBI, Richard DesLauriers, made an passionate plea for help from the public: “Someone knows who did this.”

The bombs, which exploded near the finish line of the marathon, killing three people and injuring 176, appeared to have contained fine nails, smaller than the ones used to hang pictures, or brads, one of the people assigned to the case told NBC News.

The devices, at least one in a kitchen pressure cooker, appear to have been delivered to the marathon course in duffel bags.

In Boston, people filled a park late Tuesday where an 8-year-old boy killed in the blasts once played. They held candles, joined in prayer and sang “God Bless America.”

The boy, Martin Richard, was waiting at the finish line. A second death was identified as Krystle Campbell, 29, of Medford, Mass. The third had not been named, but the Chinese consulate in New York said that she was a Chinese national, and Boston University said she was studying there.

DesLauriers told reporters that the “range of suspects and motives remains wide open,” and Attorney General Eric Holder told the public that no detail that might help investigators was too small to report.

“Importantly, the person who did this is someone’s friend, neighbor, co-worker or relative. We are asking anyone who may have heard someone speak about the marathon, or the date of April 15, in any way that indicated that he or she may have targeted this event to call us,” DesLauriers said.

Among photos from the scene under review are two given to NBC affiliate WHDH of Boston by a witness. The first picture shows a bag next to a mailbox along a barricade on the marathon route. The second — which the station said it had blurred because of its graphic nature — appears to show no sign of the bag.

There was no way to know whether the bag in those photos is relevant to the investigation, but the station provided them to the FBI for review, it said Tuesday. The person who took the pictures told WHDH that as long as an hour may have passed between the times the two photos were taken.

Sources involved in the investigation said that the pressure-cooker device was effectively a “homemade claymore,” a directional explosive that appeared to include a triggering mechanism using a battery pack and a circuit board. Both of those elements were recovered at the scene.

A picture from investigators from after the attack showed the mangled metal of a pressure cooker. The other device was housed in a metal container, but so far there is not enough evidence to determine if it was also a pressure cooker, an FBI-Homeland Security bulletin said. Another photo showed the shredded remains of a black bag apparently used to house one of the bombs.

“They functioned as designed,” said one official with strong knowledge of explosives.

The official also said: “It appeared to be built from scratch but with a sophisticated triggering mechanism. And frankly, at the end of the day, all bombs are crude devices, and it is the way they are triggered that can be sophisticated.”

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick also announced that President Barack Obama would attend an interfaith service honoring the victims of the tragedy at 11 a.m. on Thursday at Cathedral of the Holy Cross in South Boston.

Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino also said a new centralized fund was set up in order to to gather donations to help families affected by the tragedy. Called The One Fund Boston, contributions can be made through a website, onefundboston.org.

As Boston struggled to return to normal, the New York Yankees, longstanding rivals of the Boston Red Sox, played “Sweet Caroline,” an anthem of the Red Sox’ Fenway Park, at their game Tuesday night. The Red Sox, playing in Cleveland, hung a jersey in the dugout with the uniform number 617, representing the Boston area code, and the words “Boston Strong.”