BEFORE THE CARNAGE: These two men, identified by investigators as suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing Monday, are seen walking along Boylston Street shortly before it became a scene of bloody chaos. (
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Officials took one of two suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing into custody early this morning while another remained on the loose in a suburb of the city, the Boston Globe reported.
The report came after a bizarre and bloody series of events that started with the fatal shooting of a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology late last night and continued with a massive police confrontation with two of the shooting suspects in the nearby city of Watertown.
Sources told The Post that two men were involved in the killing of the MIT officer at 10:48 p.m. They then carjacked a Mercedes-Benz and made their getaway.
The suspects in the MIT shooting then got into a gun battle with police. There were also reports of explosive devices found in Watertown.
There was a major response of state, local and federal officers. At one point, cellphone service was shut off, according to numerous reports.
The Globe reported that police shut down a 20-block area of the town. The paper said another suspect was still at large after “a firefight with police.”
The report of the bomb arrest comes after the FBI released pictures of two suspects in the Boston Marathon attack, which killed three and injured 176.
“We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous,” said Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office said at the press conference early in the day yesterday.
“No one should approach them. No one should attempt to apprehend them but law enforcement.”
Within two hours of the announcement, investigators tentatively identified the men as an American citizen and a foreign national in their late 20s or early 30s, law-enforcement sources told The Post.
The suspects had been living in Boston for several months, although it was unclear how they knew each other, the sources said.
The Boston Globe report did not say which of the men was in custody.
The men were spotted walking down Boylston Street toward the marathon finish line shortly before the pressure-cooker blasts launched shrapnel through the helpless crowd Monday,.
The man identified as Suspect No. 1 wore a black jacket, a white shirt, a black hat, khakis and sunglasses. He had a black backpack and appeared to be wearing a Bridgestone golf cap.
Suspect No. 2 wore a backward, white, adjustable baseball cap and carried a lighter-colored backpack over his right shoulder.
“As you can see from one of the images, Suspects 1 and 2 appear to be walking together through the marathon crowd on Boylston Street in the direction of the finish line,” DesLauriers said.
Suspect No. 2 set down his backpack in front of the Forum restaurant, an upscale bar and grill where the second bomb went off, at around 2:50 p.m., feds say.
A photo obtained by The Post shows the suspect at that scene before the blast — with tragic little victim Martin Richard, 8, standing to the left on a police barrier.
Suspect No. 1 was not seen on any of the footage dropping his backpack, authorities said.
In another photo, posted online, a person who closely resembles Suspect No. 2 is seen calmly walking from the mayhem as smoke fills the air in the background. The man who took the photo told CNN last night that the FBI had seen it.
“Only one we believe to be planting the device is suspect Number 2,” said DesLauriers. “Suspect Number 2, with the white cap on, proceeded west on Boylston Street, and that’s all we know right now.”
Investigators asked for the public’s help in tracking down the duo.
“We know the public will play a critical role in identifying and locating these individuals,” said DesLauriers.
“Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members. Although it may be difficult, the nation is counting on those with information to come forward.”
The two are believed to be the only suspects right now, he said. Although they were described as being dangerous, “there is no additional imminent danger to the public that we are aware of,” according to DesLauriers.
The killers used crude bombs made from pressure cookers that were stuffed with ball bearings, nails and other metal items.
At least one of the devices was powered with a rechargeable Tenergy battery that is typically used in such children’s toys as remote-control cars.
FBI agents, in fact, went to several toy stores in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to ask about the battery, employees told ABC News.
Meanwhile, it was revealed last night that a victim who lost both legs in the attack — and who was photographed being wheeled from the scene in a now-iconic photo — provided evidence while still in intensive care.
Jeff Bauman awoke in the hospital and asked for a pen and paper on which he wrote: “bag, saw the guy, looked right at me,” his brother, Chris, said.
Bauman then gave the feds a full description of the man he saw drop a bag at this feet. He said the man wore a cap and sunglasses, a description similar to the image of the FBI’ s Suspect No. 1, his brother said.
Additional reporting by Josh Margolin and David K. Li