Manhunt Creates Surreal Scene in Boston Region

Boston Area Awakes to a Scene From a Bad Dream

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Normally tranquil neighborhoods were swamped by law enforcement officers Friday.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: April 19, 2013

BOSTON — Hundreds of thousands of people across the Boston region woke up Friday morning to a surreal scene of terror on their television screens: an immense manhunt was under way in their normally tranquil neighborhoods for the lone surviving suspect of the marathon bombings.

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And if they looked out their windows, they saw the same thing in real life: an overwhelming show of force by heavily armed law enforcement officers. SWAT teams roamed their streets, rifles raised, and helicopters circled overhead. In some cases, police officers banged on doors and searched neighborhoods house by house.

A sense of fear rippled across a region already on edge from Monday’s bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 170 others. The suspects’ crime spree, which began about 10:30 p.m. Thursday with a robbery at a convenience store, quickly snowballed into a deadly rampage that took the life of an M.I.T. campus police officer who was sitting in his car and that left one suspect dead after a Wild West-like shootout in the streets of suburban Watertown.

It was a gray but unusually warm morning that finally promised the arrival of spring in southern New England. But residents of Watertown, many of whom could not have slept through the police sirens and volleys of gunfire, were quickly put in lockdown.

At 5:45 a.m., Gov. Deval Patrick ordered all public transit shut down, including the subway. Amtrak trains were halted south of Boston. Several area colleges, including Harvard, M.I.T. and Boston University, canceled Friday classes. By 6:30, residents of Cambridge received recorded phone calls telling them to “shelter in place,” meaning to stay home.

At 7:10, residents of Newton Center received a recorded phone call from Newton’s chief of police telling them that one suspect was dead and that another was armed, dangerous and in the area. The call advised residents to stay inside with doors locked and not to let anyone in. It urged businesses to close and asked people not to dial 911 unless it was a true emergency.

By 8 a.m., the governor appeared at a makeshift command post in Watertown to say that he was extending his “shelter in place” order to “all of Boston.” Taxis were ordered off the streets.

The morning was riddled with false alarms. Parts of Commonwealth Avenue, a major artery through Boston, were blocked off while agents checked for a potential danger in Kenmore Square. When that proved false, another danger zone popped up somewhere else.

Any relief that the bombing suspects might be caught had to be put on hold until the residents here could first feel safe.

There was almost no traffic on the streets of Boston, much like Tuesday, the day after the city’s storied marathon was disrupted by two explosions. Even major highways like the Massachusetts Turnpike, which cuts through downtown and is usually jammed in the morning with commuters, was mostly deserted on Friday.

Few businesses appeared to be open.

The eerie scene raised troubling questions about the wisdom of President Obama’s having visited the city on Thursday while the suspects were still at large. The frantic manhunt playing out Friday morning could as easily have started a day earlier while the president and his wife, Michelle, were attending an interfaith service in Boston’s South End. On Friday, Children’s Hospital, which Mrs. Obama visited Thursday, was on lockdown.

After a night of high drama and chaos, with gun shots and explosions piercing the calm, the small suburban community of Watertown found itself an odd combination of ghost town and police state on Friday morning.

Residents started getting calls from the police shortly after 2 a.m. telling them to lock their doors, stay in their houses and go out only if directed to by a law enforcement officer.

“I got a call at 2:40 a.m., saying, ‘This is the police department calling. We have an emergency, and we need you to stay in your home,’ ” said Jeannette John, 82, in a phone interview.

“I just see more and more police cars,” she said. She lives on Mount Auburn Street, which she said was a few minutes from where a standoff with the police took place.

Most of the overnight activity — which included a police chase, gun battles and explosions -- occurred on School Street and the streets that run off it, residents said.

However, with people locked in their homes, they had a limited vantage, seeing only what they could glimpse out of parted curtains.

One resident who declined to give her name said her husband saw someone in a hoodie dashing across her yard shortly after the police called and told them to stay indoors. The couple immediately called the authorities to tell them what they saw. Like the people outside Watertown, they were relying on television to see what was happening just outside their own doors.

Helicopters circled overhead as law enforcement officers canvassed the community of 32,000.

The police scanner buzzed with activity, but in the area where the news media were cordoned off, on the edge of town, the authorities declined to comment on what might be happening within the lockdown zone.

J.J. Smith said that police officers were gathering in a parking lot across from 480 Arsenal Street and that residents had been warned to stay clear of that area, in particular.

She said that in addition to police and SWAT teams, heavily armored vehicles were assembling.

“The police are staging something big,” she said before rushing off the phone.

It was impossible to verify her account, and the police may have been using the parking lot as a staging ground simply because it was large and convenient.

Later, there were reports of police action on nearby Boylston Street. That, too, could not be confirmed.

The situation was so fraught that CNN decided to show images from Watertown only on a tape delay.

Ms. John said that while the situation around her was intense, she had spent years in the Foreign Service and was not overly concerned.

“I am sure the police can handle it,” she said. “They told us if we see something to call a number they gave us.”

Marc Santora contributed reporting from New York.

One Suspect in Boston Bombing Is Dead

2nd Man at Large; City and Suburbs on Lockdown

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The authorities are focusing on an area of Norfolk Street.

Authorities Believe the 2 Are Brothers of Chechen Origin

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and MICHAEL COOPER 48 minutes ago

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, a suspect in Monday’s attack, was killed after a police chase through the suburbs of Boston. A second suspect, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, identified as his brother, remained at large.