A week after Boston bombings, suspect hospitalized

April 22, 2013

Scott Nunes,

Posted: April 22, 2013

BOSTON (AP) – Boston Marathon bombings suspect
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remained hospitalized and unable to speak Monday with a
gunshot wound to the throat, and the 19–year old was expected to be
charged by federal authorities and face state charges in connection with
the fatal shooting of university police officer Sean Collier.

Seven days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the
city planned to mark the traumatic week with mournful silence and a
return to its bustling commute.

Authorities on Friday had made the unprecedented
request that residents stay at home during the manhunt for suspect
Tsarnaev. He was discovered that evening hiding in a boat covered by a
tarp in suburban Watertown. His older brother Tamerlan was earlier
killed during a furious getaway attempt.

“It's surreal,” said Barbara Alton, as she walked
her dog along Newbury Street. “But I feel like things are starting to
get back to normal.”

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has asked
residents to observe a moment of silence at 2:50 p.m. Monday, the time
the first of the two bombs exploded near the finish line. Bells will
ring across the city and state after the minute-long tribute to the
victims.

Many Boston residents were heading back to
workplaces and schools for the first time since a dramatic week came to
an even more dramatic end. Traffic was building on major arteries into
the city Monday morning.

In another sign of progress, city officials said
they are beginning the process of reopening to the public the six-block
site around the bombing that killed three people and wounded more than
180. The announcement came Sunday, a day when people could still watch
investigators at the crime scene work in white jumpsuits.

A private funeral was scheduled Monday for Krystle
Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant worker killed in the blasts. A
memorial service will be held that night at Boston University for
23-year-old Lu Lingzi, a graduate student from China.

City churches on Sunday paused to mourn the dead as
the city's police commissioner said the two suspects had such a large
cache of weapons that they were probably planning other attacks.

After the two brothers engaged in a gun battle with
police early Friday, authorities found many unexploded homemade bombs
at the scene, along with more than 250 rounds of ammunition.

Police Commissioner Ed Davis said the stockpile was “as dangerous as it gets in urban policing.”

“We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence
that was found at that scene – the explosions, the explosive ordnance
that was unexploded and the firepower that they had – that they were
going to attack other individuals. That's my belief at this point.”
Davis told CBS's “Face the Nation.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” he said authorities cannot be
positive there are not more explosives somewhere that have not been
found. But the people of Boston are safe, he insisted.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother,
Tamerlan, the suspects in the twin bombings that killed three people and
wounded more than 180, are ethnic Chechens from southern Russia. The
motive for the bombings remained unclear.

Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said the surviving brother's throat wound raised
questions about when he will be able to talk again, if ever.

The wound “doesn't mean he can't communicate, but
right now I think he's in a condition where we can't get any information
from him at all,” Coats told ABC's “This Week.”

It was not clear whether Tsarnaev was shot by police or inflicted the wound himself.

In the final standoff with police, shots were fired
from the boat, but investigators have not determined where the gunfire
was aimed, Davis said.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the
parents of Tamerlan Tsarnaev insisted Sunday that he came to Dagestan
and Chechnya last year to visit relatives and had nothing to do with the
militants operating in the volatile part of Russia. His father said he
slept much of the time.

A lawyer for Tamerlan Tsarnaev's wife told the AP
Sunday night that federal authorities have asked to speak with her, and
that he is discussing with them how to proceed.

Attorney Amato DeLuca said Katherine Russell
Tsarnaev did not suspect her husband of anything, and that there was no
reason for her to have suspected him. He said she had been working 70 to
80 hours, seven days a week, as a home health care aide. While she was
at work, her husband cared for their toddler daughter, he said.

The younger Tsarnaev could be charged any day. The
most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of
a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible
death sentence. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.

Across the rattled streets of Boston, churches opened their doors to remember the dead and ease the grief of the living.

At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in South Boston,
photographs of the three people killed in the attack and a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer slain Thursday were
displayed on the altar, each face illuminated by a glowing white pillar
candle.

“I hope we can all heal and move forward,” said
Kelly McKernan, who was crying as she left the service. “And obviously,
the Mass today was a first step for us in that direction.”

A six-block segment of Boylston Street, where the
bombs were detonated, remained closed Sunday. But Mayor Thomas Menino
said Sunday that once the scene is released by the FBI, the city will
follow a five-step process, including environmental testing and a safety
assessment of buildings. The exact timetable was uncertain.

Boston's historic Trinity Church could not host
services Sunday because it was within the crime scene, but the
congregation was invited to worship at the Temple Israel synagogue
instead. The FBI allowed church officials a half-hour Saturday to go
inside to gather the priests' robes, the wine and bread for Sunday's
service.

Trinity's Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III offered a prayer
for those who were slain “and for those who must rebuild their lives
without the legs that they ran and walked on last week.”

“So where is God when the terrorists do their
work?” Lloyd asked. “God is there, holding us and sustaining us. God is
in the pain the victims are suffering, and the healing that will go on.
God is with us as we try still to build a just world, a world where
there will not be terrorists doing their terrible damage.”

Near the crime scene, Dan and Keri Arone were
pushing their 11-week-old daughter in a stroller when they stopped along
Newbury Street, a block from the bombing site. Wearing his bright blue
marathon jacket, Dan Arone said he had crossed the finish line 40
minutes before the explosions.

The Waltham, Massachusetts couple visited the area
to leave behind pairs of their running shoes among the bouquets of
flowers, hand-written signs and other gifts at a makeshift memorial on
Boylston Street, near the police barriers.

“I thought maybe we'd somehow get some closure,”
Dan Arone said of leaving behind the sneakers. “But I don't feel any
closure yet.”

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives was tracing the suspects' weapons to try to determine how
they were obtained.

Neither of the brothers had permission to carry a
gun. Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said it was unclear
whether either of them ever applied for a gun permit, and the
applications are not considered public records.

But the younger brother would have been denied a
permit based on his age alone. Only people 21 or older are allowed gun
licenses in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, surgeons at a Cambridge hospital said
the Boston transit police officer wounded in a shootout with the
suspects had lost nearly all his blood, and his heart had stopped from a
single gunshot wound that severed three major blood vessels in his
right thigh.

Richard Donohue, 33, was in critical but stable
condition. He is sedated and on a breathing machine but opened his eyes,
moved his hands and feet and squeezed his wife's hand Sunday.

___

Associated Press writer Meghan Barr and national
reporter Allen G. Breed in Boston, and writer Michelle R. Smith in
Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

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