Officials found a fresh stash of firework shells last night in a Boston suburb, in what could be new evidence against Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, according to a new report.
Federal agents and police found the shells, some of which appeared to have been emptied of gunpowder, in a used clothing collection bin in a Watertown grocery story parking lot, ABC News reported.
“It was a device that looks like a big firecracker … that had a wick in it,” said Michael Tambosi, a representative of the group Planet Aid New England, which owns the clothing donation containers.
According to the report, a driver for the charity found about six Roman candle fireworks in a plastic blag when he opened the bin.
The bins were taken overnight to an FBI staging area for evidence from the race blast.
Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar, 19, are accused of setting off the bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 180 others on April 15. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout, while Dzhokhar was captured alive but badly wounded.
The Post reported today that Tsarnaev brothers set off their deadly explosives with a simple device found in a kid’s toy box — a remote control for a play car.
The remote, which included a transmitter powered by a rechargeable “C” battery, was found among the debris of the pressure-cooker bombs planted by the brothers, said Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger.
The Maryland Democrat said the FBI revealed the detonation system during a briefing about the April 15 attack, which killed three and injured more than 200.
“It was a remote control for toy cars,” Ruppersberger said. “Which says to me . . . they got the information on how to build the bomb from Inspire magazine.”
Inspire, an English-language online magazine published by al Qaeda, was cited by Dzhokhar, 19, as a blueprint for the bombs.
It published an article on pressure-cooker bombs in 2010 called “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”
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The Tsarnaev brothers bought two mortar kits from a New Hampshire fireworks store in February, although the amount of gunpowder the kits would have supplied wouldn’t have been enough on its own to detonate the bombs, company officials said Tuesday.
Tamerlan bought two “Lock and Load” reloadable mortar kits containing 24 shells each on the evening of Feb. 6, said April Walton, the manager of Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook. He paid $200 cash but scanned his driver’s license into the company’s computer system as required by store policy.
“We have a bank of computers at the front end where we greet everyone and hand out safety flyers,” she said. “He was just an average customer. … He signed in, walked around and purchased the kits with cash.”
Walton wasn’t in the store at the time but said the employee who handled the sale described it as a routine transaction.
The amount of gunpowder that could be harvested from the kits — less than a pound and a half — would not have been enough to detonate the Boston bombs, company Vice President William Weimer said, although it’s possible some of that powder may have been used.
The absence of colored smoke in the Boston explosions and other special effects powders mixed in with the fireworks’ blast powder suggests the bombers sought and used an alternate fuel source, he said.
“My suspicion is they experimented with this, decided they couldn’t get enough powder out of them and went to look for another fuel,” Weimer said.
Fireworks are legal in New Hampshire, but not in Massachusetts.
The store no longer has video of Tsarnaev’s visit in February because surveillance cameras record over the tape every 30 to 45 days.
Store computers don’t record an image of a customer’s driver’s license, but capture the information off it. The computer file on particular customers then reflects all purchases they have made. Tsarnaev’s only trip to the store was the cash transaction in early February, Weimer said.
“He was a one-store, one-time customer,” he said.
Weimer said it’s not his company’s first brush with terrorist activity. In 2010, the man accused of a failed Times Square car bombing was seen on surveillance video buying consumer-grade fireworks mostly made up of paper and cardboard from a Phantom Fireworks store in Matamoras, Pa.