Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”
Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.
At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours — enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.
Watch “Special Report Investigates: Benghazi — New Revelations” on Fox News at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, 3 p.m. on Sunday and 10 p.m. on Sunday.
A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they were never told to deploy. In fact, a Pentagon official says there were never any requests to deploy assets from outside the country. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Spectre gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.
According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.
“There’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here,” Panetta said Thursday. “But the basic principle here … is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”
U.S. officials argue that there was a period of several hours when the fighting stopped before the mortars were fired at the annex, leading officials to believe the attack was over.
Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers.
Tyrone Woods was later joined at the scene by fellow former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was sent in from Tripoli as part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the consulate began — a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.
A motorcade of dozens of Libyan vehicles, some mounted with 50 caliber machine guns, belonging to the February 17th Brigades, a Libyan militia which is friendly to the U.S., finally showed up at the CIA annex at approximately 3 a.m. An American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m. (four hours after the initial attack on the consulate) and was delayed for 45 minutes at the airport because they could not at first get transportation, allegedly due to confusion among Libyan militias who were supposed to escort them to the annex, according to Benghazi sources.
The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi’s fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.
Fox News has also learned that Stevens was in Benghazi that day to be present at the opening of an English-language school being started by the Libyan farmer who helped save an American pilot who had been shot down by pro-Qaddafi forces during the initial war to overthrow the regime. That farmer saved the life of the American pilot and the ambassador wanted to be present to launch the Libyan rescuer’s new school.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/show-the-movie-save-the-country/sign.html
For the entire Presidential Candidacy of Barack Obama the Mainstream Media has hidden the details of his background,his beliefs and his radical associations with America hating communist and even convicted terrorists.They know that any of his know associations and anti-colonialist convictions would instantly derail Obama’s chance of re-election.
After seeing 2016 The Movie I decided something has to be done.
I believe the more people who see this movie the more people who will have a true understanding of this modern-day real life American Villan.
Please sign this petition ‘Show the Movie Save our Country’ .This movie,if seen by enough people would definitely make a huge impact on the voting public.Please see it and take some friends.I saw it yesterday in Auburn at the Carmike’s Cinema.The movie was so interesting! The crowd was around 100 or so viewers (small town) and I’ve never been in a quieter respectful audience.It was a very nice.So go see it.If you want to know all about Barack Obama and the reason he makes the decisions he does,SEE THE MOVIE ! 2016 ! Sign the Petition Save the Country !
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/show-the-movie-save-the-country/sign.htmlJust
Any Obama ad put on this page is done so by WordPressed.It goes against all that this blogger believes in.This goes to show that the actual MSM is everywhere. I intend to send angry emails until this is stopped.Thank You for your help and your time.I recieve no money from this advertiser.
Watching the video after reading the article below it will be disturbing!
FBI ‘Stunned’ As Judge Mysteriously Shuts Down Boston Bomber Interrogation Before Truth Can Be Learned
Judge Bowler lists herself as “a dedicated international traveler” on her bio in Business Week. Where does she travel to in such a dedicated fashion? Who does she see there, and what does she do, so regularly as to be self-described as “dedicated”? And, perhaps, “dedicated” to anything in particular? Did she take on a radical Muslim boyfriend in her travels?
BOWLER’S APPROVAL TO SPEAK IN EGYPT CAME FROM THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD – Excerpted from The Conservative Tree House: That 2012 trip is “Post Morsi” – Meaning she was delivering her speech at Cairo University after the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the release from jail of Ayman al-Zawahiri. Meaning…. she had to have the approval of The Muslim Brotherhood to be an American Judge in Egypt – delivering a lecture, at Cairo University in 2012.
…
Excerpted from FRONT PAGE MAG: As FOX News reported and Robert Spencer noted, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stopped talking once he was prematurely read his Miranda rights. That helps the authorities establish the lone wolf narrative. Whatever else we might have learned from him is probably lost.
Once Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was read his rights on Monday, he immediately stopped talking, according to four officials of both political parties who were briefed on the interrogation but insisted on anonymity because the briefing was private.
After roughly 16 hours of questioning, investigators were surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the hospital room and read Tsarnaev his rights, the four officials and one law enforcement official said. Investigators had planned to keep questioning him.
And
District Court Judge Marianne Bowler arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights.
But Fox News’ sources say there was confusion about Bowler’s timing, with some voicing concerns that investigators were not given enough time to question Dzhokhar under the “public safety exception” invoked by the Justice Department.
Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators’ questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.
Judge Bowler has some interesting international connections. She is a member of the Member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Apparently in that capacity, she visited and spoke on legal issues at a number of Muslim countries, becoming the first female judge to speak in Kuwait, appearing also in Egypt and in the United Arab Emirates. Oddly enough, aside from a visit to the US embassy in Belgrade, those are the only international appearances that she lists and they all take place in Muslim countries.
While Islamic infiltration of our political system is well known, the infiltration of our legal system is less well known, but operates within similar parameters with foreign contacts being made. There is no way of knowing how much Bowler has been influenced by her connections with the legal and political systems of the Muslim world, but it is telling that her international judicial relations appear to begin and end with the Muslim world.
Shocking and unprecedented! FBI was totally stunned!
Read more at http://patdollard.com/2013/04/judge-marianne-bowler-who-mirandized-jihadi-bomber-has-ties-to-muslim-countries/
This image obtained Friday courtesy of CBS News shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, exiting the boat where he was captured in Watertown, Mass.(Photo: CBS News via AFP/Getty Images)
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday after a dramatic manhunt that paralyzed Boston and its suburbs, is under heavy guard in a Boston hospital.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, is awake in a Boston hospital and responding in writing to questions, a law enforcement official said Sunday.
Investigators who have been waiting to interrogate Tsarnaev are looking into the possibility that his neck wound was self inflicted, a federal law enforcement official said.
The official, who has been briefed on the matter but is not authorized to comment publicly, said that suspicions of a suicide attempt before he was captured center on the small appearance of the entry wound and larger exit wound area
A law enforcement official confirmed that the suspect was awake Sunday evening. Earlier, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis told reporters that Tsarnaev was still “not in any condition to be interrogated.” He said the suspect’s condition has only stabilized in “the last few hours.”
Though the suspect’s condition was listed as serious, Davis said “serious and critical are interchangeable.”
The U.S. attorney’s office said no charges would be filed Sunday.
Separately, the official said it will likely take “some time” before agents are able to review information held by Russian authorities that prompted the Russian government to ask the FBI in 2011 to review the activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother who died in a gunfight with police in Watertown.
A lawyer for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, told the Associated Press on Sunday that federal authorities have asked to speak her.
Authorities went to the suburban Rhode Island home of Tsarnaev’s in-laws Sunday evening, where Katherine Russell Tsarnaev has been staying. Lawyer Amato DeLuca said she did not speak with them, and they are discussing how to proceed.
DeLuca says Tsarnaev did not suspect her husband of anything, and nothing seemed amiss after the bombings. He says she had been working 70 to 80 hours a week as a home health care aide, while her husband cared for their daughter.
Davis said on CBS’ Face the Nation that police believe Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, “were going to attack other individuals.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday after a dramatic manhunt that paralyzed Boston and its suburbs, is under heavy guard in a Boston hospital.
The brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, told the Associated Press that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was “used” by his older brother to carry out the bombing. “He’s not been understanding anything,” Tsarni said. “He’s a 19-year-old boy.”
The Tsarnaev family are ethnic Chechens who came to the United States from Kyrgyzstan and Dagestan.
Tsarni also told the AP that his relationship with his nephews deteriorated several years ago when Tamerlan Tsarnaev “started carrying all this nonsense associated with religion, with Islamic religion” and began using words such as “jihad” without really understanding their meaning.
Reps. Peter King and Michael McCaul, Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee, want federal officials to explain why Tamerlan Tsarnaev was released by the FBI after it questioned him in 2011 at the request of Russia’s government.
Also drawing scrutiny: Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s trip to Russia last year and whether he returned with more radical political and religious views.
In Makhachkala, Russia, the Tsarnaev brothers’ parents insisted that Tamerlan visited Dagestan and Chechnya last year to see relatives and had nothing to do with militants.
His father said his son stayed with him in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where the family lived briefly before moving to the U.S. a decade ago. The father had only recently returned.
“He was here, with me in Makhachkala,” Anzor Tsarnaev told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. “He slept until 3 p.m., and you know, I would ask him: ‘Have you come here to sleep?’ He used to go visiting, here and there. He would go to eat somewhere. Then he would come back and go to bed.”
On Sunday, the Caucasus Emirate, which Russia and the U.S. consider a terrorist organization, denied involvement in the Boston attack.
A woman who works in a small shop opposite Tsarnaev’s apartment building said she only saw his son during the course of one month last summer. She described him as a dandy.
“He dressed in a very refined way,” Madina Abdullaeva said. “His boots were the same color as his clothes. They were summer boots, light, with little holes punched in the leather.”
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia last year indicated that he used an alias while traveling there.
Rogers said on NBC’s Meet the Press that while the elder suspect’s six-month trip would be the subject of review, he did not believe the FBI had failed to detect suspicious behavior when the Russian government asked the bureau to review Tsarnaev’s activities before his 2012 Russian trip.
“I don’t think they missed anything,” he said.
Anwar Kazmi, a board member of Islamic Society of Boston, said Tamerlan Tsarnaev interrupted a sermon about three months ago when the imam compared Martin Luther King Jr. to the prophet Mohammed. Kazmi said Tsarnaev objected to the comparison.
A dispute over federal officials’ plans to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev without reading him his Miranda rights also is taking shape.
In a statement released Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union said interrogations without advising a suspect of his right to avoid self-incrimination “is not an open-ended exception.” A public-safety exception allows authorities to question suspects only when the public may be in immediate danger.
“We must not waver from our tried-and-true justice system, even in the most difficult times,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
The federal public defender’s office in Massachusetts will represent Tsarnaev. Miriam Conrad, the state’s public defender, said a lawyer should be appointed quickly because there are “serious issues regarding possible interrogation.”
Three people were killed and more than 170 were injured when two bombs exploded April 15 near the Boston Marathon finish line.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press that surveillance video shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev putting a backpack down at the marathon bombing site. Patrick said the video is “pretty clear about his involvement and pretty chilling, frankly.”
Patrick also said that while “a lot” of questions remained unanswered, there is no evidence of additional devices or that others were plotting more attacks. “There is no basis for concern about another imminent threat,” he said.
The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers.
Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack.
More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.
A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.
“They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.”
A specialist team of CIA and FBI interrogators was yesterday flown to a Boston hospital to grill wounded Dzhokhar, 19, about the secret group. The University of Massachusetts student was caught on Friday after hiding out in a boat parked in a garden in locked down Watertown the day after a gun battle with police left his 26-year-old brother and a rookie cop dead.
Dzhokhar is said to have run his brother over as he escaped in a stolen car while Tamerlan lay handcuffed on the ground. They were carrying six bombs with them at the time, three of which exploded, as well as a handgun and rifle. The devices were thought to be pipe bombs.
Last night Dzhokhar – badly wounded but alive – lay handcuffed to his hospital bed under armed guard. The other three arrested in the port of New Bedford are also believed to be of college age.
An aerial infrared image shows the outline of Dzhokhar hiding in the boat
AP
Dzhokhar even went to a college party two days after the bombs wreaked havoc at the finish line. According to fellow students, he “looked relaxed” as he joined in a party at the campus on Wednesday night.
Hours later he was involved in the shootout which saw his brother killed.
Investigators have begun piecing together how the “well-mannered” brothers of Chechen origin were radicalised. Neighbours of the family said older brother Tamerlan had recently become obsessed with Islam. He mysteriously left the US in January last year to spend six months in Russia. Yesterday senior FBI counter-terrorism official Kevin Brock said: “It’s a key thread for investigators.”
It also emerged the Bureau interviewed Tamerlan two years ago, at the request of the Russian government, but could not establish that he had ties to terrorist radicals.
This was despite his worrying Russian-language YouTube page featuring links to extremist Islamic sites and others since taken down by YouTube.
One link showed an hour-long speech by an Islamic teacher called Shaykh Feiz Mohammed, while other videos are labled “Terrorists” and “Islam”.
The radical cleric, with links to extremist British Muslims, encouraged his followers to become martyrs for Islam. He said: “Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.”
Yesterday the brothers’ mother Zubeidat, speaking from her home in Russia, added further intrigue to her sons’ murky past when she claimed the boys had been framed by the FBI over the two bombs last Monday that left three dead and 178 injured.
Chechen bombers: Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev at the Boston Marathon
AP
She claimed the FBI had been keeping watch on her eldest boy for up to five years. She said: “They knew what my son was doing. They knew what sites on the internet he was going to.
“They were telling me that he was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremist sites. They were controlling him.”
The bombers’ father Anzor wept at news that his youngest son had been captured alive. In a phone interview with a US news channel he told his
son: “Tell police everything. Everything. Just be honest.”
US Government officials have said the brothers were not under surveillance as possible militants. And an FBI statement said the matter was closed because interviews with Tamerlan and family members “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign”. But now they believe the pair, who emigrated to the United States from Dagestan about a decade ago, were part of a terror cell.
College dropout Tamerlan’s American wife Katherine Russell, 24, and their three-year-old daughter Zahara were yesterday thrown into the spotlight. She was a Christian before they married but converted to Islam. Her parents Warren, a doctor, and Judith were said to be “stunned” by their son-in-law’s involvement in the tragedy.
Judith and Warren issued a joint statement saying: “Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. In the aftermath of the Patriot’s Day horror, we know we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Our hearts are sickened by the horror he has inflicted.”
Katherine, wearing a black hijab, was picked up by FBI agents at their home in Cambridge near Boston on Friday. Dope-smoker Dzhokhar was captured after a Watertown resident called police to say the fugitive was hiding in a boat in his back garden.
David Henneberry had gone into his garden for a cigarette after police lifted restrictions on people leaving their homes, believing the bomber had left the area. He noticed that the cover over his boat had blood on it and a strap had been cut. He went back into the house to get a stepladder and looked inside.
His stepson Robert said: “He stuck his head under the tarp and noticed a pool of blood and something crumpled up in a ball. Instead of being a hero of the moment and yelling at what we now know was the suspect, he did the right thing and called 911.”
Police immediately evacuated the family and surrounded the house, using a megaphone to tell Dzhokhar to come out with his hands up.
When he failed to respond they opened fire at the boat’s hull. Robert said: “They wound up shooting a couple of rounds through the boat. He wasn’t going to like that.”
Dzhokhar was wounded by the volley of gunfire and police were able to move in and arrest him. They later released infrared pictures taken from a helicopter showing Dzhokhar hiding in the boat.
Investigators will interrogate the bomber, still seriously ill last night, without reading him his rights – using special “public safety” powers.
The family of eight-year-old bombing victim Martin Richard welcomed the arrest of Tsarnaev. “Our community is once again safe from these men,” the family said in a statement.
Shortly before Dzhokhar’s capture, President Obama spoke by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The White House said Obama “praised the close co-operation the US has received from Russia on counter-terrorism, including in the wake of the Boston attack”.
There were scenes of celebration across Boston as news spread of the capture of the remaining bomber.
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The Massachusetts college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombing was captured wounded, but alive after hiding out in a boat parked in a backyard on Friday evening.
Boston police confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been apprehended, taking to social media to announce,’Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.’
The mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, was quoted by the Boston Globe as taking to the police scanner to exclaim, ‘We got him’.
The bloody endgame came four days after the bombing and just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives that ripped through the crowd at the marathon finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.
His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lay dead in a furious 24-hour drama that transfixed the nation and paralyzed the Boston area with fear.
Relieved law enforcement officers began cheering and clapping after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was arrested and is now in a serious condition at
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is reported to have lost a great deal of blood.
And thousands of jubilant members of the public took to the streets of Watertown to salute FBI, SWAT, ATF and police officers as they left the scene of Tsarnaev’s final showdown.
Neighbors reported that Tsarnaev was ‘covered in blood’ as he was taken away by law enforcement officials.
Boston police commissioner Ed Davis was celebratory in his tone as he took to Twitter to say, ‘It’s a proud day to be a Boston police officer. Thank you all.’
WATERTOWN — One suspect in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings has been captured, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation. Another remains on the loose in Watertown after a firefight with police. Authorities have established a 20-block perimeter as they search for him.
A scene of chaos descended on Cambridge and Watertown late Thursday night and early Friday morning, as police confirmed an MIT police officer was shot and killed, and an apparent carjacking led police on a wild chase into Watertown.
Witnesses in Watertown said they heard explosions. Police officers were screaming about improvised explosive devices.
Authorities would not comment on whether the events were connected to Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. At least one of the suspects in Watertown appeared to be a man in his 20s.
FBI agents were on the scene in Watertown.
“We are aware of the situation, we are being involved, and we are monitoring,” said an FBI representative who requested anonymity because of not being authorized to speak publicly. The FBI source said early Friday it is “too early to speculate” on a relation to the Marathon bombing.
Dozens of police officers descended on Watertown Square after midnight.
“This is still extremely dangerous,” an FBI agent said. The Cambridge bomb squad arrived in Watertown shortly after 1:30 a.m.
A man in handcuffs was being questioned by the FBI in the back of an ambulance.
At Arsenal Court and Arsenal Street in Watertown, an officer bellowed: “Ya gotta get outta here. There’s an active shooter here with an active explosive. Go!”
Peter Jennings, 33, said he was sleeping just before 1 a.m. in his home on Prentiss Street in Watertown when he was awakened by a huge boom.
“It sounded like a stick of dynamite went off,” he said. “I looked out the window, and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen – blue light after blue light after blue light.”
He said more than three dozen emergency vehicles with sirens blaring were heading down Rt. 16 West. He went to the end of his street, where some neighbors were gathering. The air, he said, smelled like “at the end of a fireworks show, like a wick smell.”
“I had a bad feeling because of what happened on Monday,” he said.
John Antonucci’s 79-year-old mother called him hysterical from her home in Laurel Street. She heard about five gun shots and didn’t know what to do.
“She was saying they’re running down the street shooting,” Antonucci said standing outside if yellow police tape. “She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand what she was talking about.”
So he told her: Stay inside the house.
Residents describe the neighborhood as safe and family oriented, where they leave open doors and windows and feed stray cats.
Standing on the corner of Quincy and Nichols as police officers hastily strung up caution tape, Lindsay Gaylord, 25, and Collin Ausfeld, 26, peered over the scene to get a glimpse of their apartment about a block away on Dartmouth Street.
“I was buying ice cream right there” — Gaylord pointed to a structure a few steps away, behind the caution tape “just this afternoon.”
Ausfeld stared at the crime scene in front of him, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. As an afterthought, he muttered, “I hope the apartment doesn’t blow up.”
The couple said they moved to the neighborhood in January, leaving behind their Belmont place, because Watertown was closer to the city, and their block was quiet, safe, and friendly.
“After this, I still feel safe on this street,” Gaylord said. “I mean, you just never know with these things.”
Adam Healy, 31, said he stepped outside for a cigarette near one of the shooting scenes in Watertown, when he heard gunfire.
“I just heard tons of gunshots,” he said. “Gunshot, gunshot, gunshot, gunshot. Then I saw an explosion and saw a burst of light in the sky.”
Imran Saif, a cab driver, was parking his car for the night near Dexter and School streets and was preparing to bike home from Cambridge when he heard a series of loud noises that he said “sounded like fireworks.” He said he biked toward the sounds, thinking they fireworks, when people in nearby houses began waving him back, telling him it was gunfire.
“It just sounded like there was automatic weapons going off, and I heard a few explosions,” he said. “They sounded like fireworks, mostly, big fireworks going off — tons, I’d say. I’m really scared. When I found out it was gunshots, that just knocked the wind out of me.”
Police were demanding that cellphones be turned off.
The MIT officer, who has not been identified, was shot multiple times at 10:48 p.m., according to the Middlesex district attorney’s office. No one else was hurt, and no arrests had been made by early Friday.
The manhunt fanned out from Kendall Square over an area that has endured a tragic and tumultuous week, in the aftermath of the fatal explosions at Monday’s Boston Marathon. There was no report of a connection between the two events, but the swarm of sirens and circling helicopters rattled a region already on edge.
Police from several agencies were conducting a manhunt for the gunman across the school campus and on the T’s Red Line, according to authorities.
MIT and Cambridge police responded to a report of shots fired at 10:48 p.m. Thursday near Main and Vassar streets, according to the university.
Police officers and canine units swept the campus, and a big swath of Vassar Street was blocked.
The university issued an alert to students and faculty to remain inside.
An eerie quiet descended on the campus as teams of police officers combed the campus block by block. SWAT teams were present.
Police checked bushes and alleys and yanked on doors.
Officers from the MIT and Harvard departments, as well as Cambridge and State Police, were present.
Siddhartha Varshney was walking home from dinner with two friends when they were stopped at the police cordon.
“Initially, we thought they had caught the suspect in the bombing,” the 28-year-old said. But they then learned it was a shooting involving an MIT officer.
“Well, I — honestly — I mean, I can’t think what I make of it. The situation is a little tense,” he said. “And I hope that whoever he is gets caught.”
Few seemed to be out on the campus at the time of the shooting. One professor, standing feet from the police tape, said he came out of his office when he heard a commotion of sirens and saw police lights.
At around midnight, a frantic scene was unfolding at Massachusetts General Hospital, where a dozen police cars arrived with sirens on and several women were brought in by police, looking deeply upset.
Two bombs exploded in the crowded streets near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 140 in a bloody scene of shattered glass and severed limbs that raised alarms that terrorists might have struck again in the U.S.
A White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still unfolding said the attack was being treated as an act of terrorism.
President Barack Obama vowed that those responsible will “feel the full weight of justice.”
As many as two unexploded bombs were also found near the end of the 26.2-mile course as part of what appeared to be a well-coordinated attack, but they were safely disarmed, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.
The fiery twin blasts took place about 10 seconds and about 100 yards apart, knocking spectators and at least one runner off their feet, shattering windows and sending dense plumes of smoke rising over the street and through the fluttering national flags lining the route. Blood stained the pavement, and huge shards were missing from window panes as high as three stories.
“They just started bringing people in with no limbs,” said runner Tim Davey of Richmond, Va. He said he and his wife, Lisa, tried to shield their children’s eyes from the gruesome scene inside a medical tent that had been set up to care for fatigued runners, but “they saw a lot.”
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“They just kept filling up with more and more casualties,” Lisa Davey said. “Most everybody was conscious. They were very dazed.”
As the FBI took charge of the investigation, authorities shed no light on a motive or who may have carried out the bombings, and police said they had no suspects in custody. Officials in Washington said there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
WBZ-TV reported late Monday that law enforcement officers were searching an apartment in the Boston suburb of Revere. Massachusetts State Police confirmed that a search warrant related to the investigation into the explosions was served Monday night in Revere but provided no further details.
Police said three people were killed. An 8-year-old boy was among the dead, according to a person who talked to a friend of the family and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hospitals reported at least 144 people injured, at least 17 of them critically. The victims’ injuries included broken bones, shrapnel wounds and ruptured eardrums.
At Massachusetts General Hospital, Alisdair Conn, chief of emergency services, said: “This is something I’ve never seen in my 25 years here … this amount of carnage in the civilian population. This is what we expect from war.”
Some 23,000 runners took part in the race, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious marathons.
One of Boston’s biggest annual events, the race winds up near Copley Square, not far from the landmark Prudential Center and the Boston Public Library. It is held on Patriots Day, which commemorates the first battles of the American Revolution, at Concord and Lexington in 1775.
Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis asked people to stay indoors or go back to their hotel rooms and avoid crowds as bomb squads methodically checked parcels and bags left along the race route. He said investigators didn’t know whether the bombs were hidden in mailboxes or trash cans.
Bloodbath in Boston as two explosions rock finish line of iconic Boston Marathon race at around 2.50 p.m. as race was winding down
Two people confirmed dead and over 100 people injured – with up to a eight critically ill – 14 in a serious condition – many amputations reported by city hospitals
It has been reported that an eight-year-old child was one of the two people confirmed dead in the blast
Suspect being ‘held in Boston hospital’ with severe injuries while another man is pictured in handcuffs
A potential suspect in the Boston marathon attacks is being guarded by police in hospital, according to reports.
Several reports now say a suspect is being guarded in a Boston hospital bed. One report said he was a Saudi Arabian national.
The reports claim the hospitalized suspect was himself injured by shrapnel from the finish line explosions and has severe injuries
The New York Post said a police source told them the suspect was a Saudi Arabian national.
Police were keen to underline there had been no arrests but they did say they were talking to suspects.
There was another individual pictured in handcuffs at the scene but it wasn’t clear whether it was an unrelated arrest or not
‘At this time, we haven’t been notified of any arrests or anyone apprehended,’ a police spokesperson said.
Other reports suggested one line of inquiry was an individual caught on camera before the attack carrying multiple backpacks into the area – 20 minutes before the deadly blasts.
It came as police were believed to be looking at whether bombs were planted in trashcans along the route.
Another possible link is that today is Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts.
The Oklahoma City bombing took place two days after Patriot’s Day in 1995.
An FBI source told Mail Online it was an area being examined.
The two blasts occurred almost concurrently near the finish line of the marathon killing 2 and injuring dozens.
Police initially said a third blast occurred at the John F.Kennedy Presidential Library but later reported it as an unrelated fire.
Cellphone service was shut down across the area to prevent any potential remote detonations as police feared there were secondary devices.
Police were also said to be investigating the surveillance video of a potential suspect carrying backpacks.
The report appeared to corroborate earlier suggestions that small homemade bombs were responsible for the attacks designed to go off in unison and cause mass casualties.
Police were in a desperate race against time to find any additional devices this afternoon and said the task had been complicated by the items discarded by spectators fleeing the scene.
Multiple reports were flooding in in the moments after the attack saying there were devices reported outside Harvard and other sites along the marathon route.
Police said none of the reports were later confirmed as explosives.
All off-duty officers in the city were called back on duty as dog units were sent in to help the emergency response.
The area will remain cordoned off as forensic work continues.
Police were pleading with onlookers to head home over fears the dangers remained in the downtown area of the city.
NBC reported that the devices which caused the blasts were ‘small homemade bombs’ as the FBI referred it as a ‘terrorist attack’.
Police departments across the country including San Francisco and New York have been put on heightened alert.
In London security will now be assessed ahead of the marathon being held there on Sunday.
A non-fly zone was
temporarily introduced over the city and has now been lifted.
Runners still on the course were being bussed out this afternoon as officers begun the hard task of trying to work out who would cause such an attack.
Early indications suggested the bombs were planted at the finish line rather than being suicide attacks.
U.S. President Barack Obama was notified and directed his administration to provide whatever assistance was necessary, the White House said.
No groups have claimed credit for the attack and officials say no intelligence alerted them to a threat prior to the marathon.
Anyone with information about the explosions should call 1800-494-TIPS.
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