Boston Explosions

[lockmat]

There are always more questions than answers in these instances. Here are a few

1. Based off reports, they had the Honda SUV, stole the Benz and split and rejoined in the Mercedes. At this time the shoot out happened and one was killed but the other one got away. How?!?!?

Isn't the entire bpd and fbi tracking him? Don't they have a helicopter? How does this happen?

This is probably more difficult to answer: why did they rob and steal the Mercedes in the first place if they already had a car? Why rob a store and blow your cover? Did they need cash for the road?

Then, for what reason did they go on campus to kill a campus guard?

It makes absolutely nonsense to me.

Sorry, we haven't had threads on these type of events lately but I just needed a place to discuss this.

[KinkaidAlum]

They are now reporting that they did NOT rob the 7-11 last night. Apparently that robbery was committed by someone else.

 

I think the Honda CRV was found in Cambridge on Norfolk St. in front of their house. My guess is they didn't have access to that car for fear that with their photos all over the place, they couldn't return home. Norfolk St. is just 2 blocks away from my ex, who has been freaking out with all the rumors of explosives all over the place.

 

MIT is South of Central Square closer to the Charles River. I gather they were on foot and were likely trying to steal a car in the MIT/Kendall Square area. I am guessing this because MIT/Kendall is much quieter at night than Central Square. Far less likely to get spotted. Sadly, it seems like the MIT patrol guy stumbled upon them. 3rd street, where they carjacked the Mercedes SUV is just a few blocks away from where the cop was killed.

 

The part that makes no sense to me is why they didn't kill the car owner after his atm stopped working for them? These guys are willing to kill an 8 year old boy but they wont shoot a driver when they are on the run? Something just smells fishy or maybe that guy is the luckiest guy on the planet...

 

Memorial Drive (the roadway that follows the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge) is parkway that offers easy access to Watertown and there's almost no traffic on it at night. Charlesgate (where it is being rumored they left an ied) fronts the river near the Mass Ave. bridge. Watertown is just about 5 minutes West of there.

 

I watched local Boston news online and listened to the police scanner all night. I have a good friend that lives right there in Watertown and I used to shop at the Shaws and Target all the time. I also bought my car from the Lexus dealership on Arsenal Rd. An eyewitness saw the shootout. According to him, the older brother charged the police after a bomb caused a cloud of smoke to envelope the street. The younger brother apparently hopped back into the mercedes, turned the car around, and charged the police while running over his own brother.

 

It's amazing to me that he hasn't been caught. 9,000 police/guardsmen/soldiers/fbi guys, etc... were looking for him. He's 19 and still unaccounted for!

[august948]

The part that makes no sense to me is why they didn't kill the car owner after his atm stopped working for them? These guys are willing to kill an 8 year old boy but they wont shoot a driver when they are on the run? Something just smells fishy or maybe that guy is the luckiest guy on the planet...

Could be at that point no one knew what they were up to and they didn't want to risk a gunshot being reported.

It's amazing to me that he hasn't been caught. 9,000 police/guardsmen/soldiers/fbi guys, etc... were looking for him. He's 19 and still unaccounted for!

I heard that he grew up or lived in the area. If true, he might know some places to hide and/or have a friend close by.

[lockmat]

It's amazing to me that he hasn't been caught. 9,000 police/guardsmen/soldiers/fbi guys, etc... were looking for him. He's 19 and still unaccounted for!

Exactly my point. Wasn't there tens, if not hundreds of cars at the scene of the shooting when he fled? How inept to you have to be to let him get away. I probably should be more gracious without all the details.

[livincinco]

Exactly my point. Wasn't there tens, if not hundreds of cars at the scene of the shooting when he fled? How inept to you have to be to let him get away. I probably should be more gracious without all the details.

 

CNN just had an ex-FBI guy on that attributed it to "the fog of war" and the darkness.  I have not experienced "the fog of war" personally, but it seems like that usually involves more than a single person being on the other side.

[august948]

CNN just had an ex-FBI guy on that attributed it to "the fog of war" and the darkness.  I have not experienced "the fog of war" personally, but it seems like that usually involves more than a single person being on the other side.

Well, you've got the darkness, the fact that the guy is (or looks to be) fairly small and if he's 19 he can probably outrun most cops. Plus you've got a lot of officers, but they're all coming in willy-nilly from different jurisdictions and under different command structures. There was probably a fair amount of confusion at first and I still wonder if the guy knew the area and knew where the best places to go were.

[lockmat]

NBC just said he was in the SUV when he blew past the police line. So he didn't escape on foot. Inexplicable

Was the helicopter refueling at the time???

[KinkaidAlum]

Could be at that point no one knew what they were up to and they didn't want to risk a gunshot being reported.

I heard that he grew up or lived in the area. If true, he might know some places to hide and/or have a friend close by.

 

They had already killed the MIT policeman so gunshots had already been fired. Seems so odd to deliberately place the bomb behind a family (google the pic that is out there showing him walking away after leaving his bag right behind the little boy that died, his sister that lost her leg, and their clapping mother who has head injuries) but not be willing to kill a guy that you carjack, especially since they apparently told the man that they were the marathon bombers.

 

The kid did grow up near Watertown. Cambridge is right next door. 

 

I am so glad they caught him. Hopefully the doctors and nurses at Beth Israel can stabilize him so we can bring him to trial.

[KinkaidAlum]

NBC just said he was in the SUV when he blew past the police line. So he didn't escape on foot. Inexplicable

Was the helicopter refueling at the time???

 

There was light rain overnight in the Boston metro area with very low cloud cover so the helicopters couldn't be in the air.

[RedScare]

Sweet Caroline should sound especially good today!

 

[samagon]

After this sequence I'm left with a realization.

 

The realizations are that mainstream news media have no idea what they are doing, they don't care about the factual nature of the information they publish, and there's no way for me to validate the source.

 

On Monday I was keeping updated through some websites (reddit mainly) that were posting facts as they happened through police scanners. It was obvious (from others in the office who were getting their info from CNN, or Fox) that mainstream news had no clue. I think one CNN reporter summed it up fairly well for everyone when he said live on the air "We don't know what the f**k is going on". They apologized, mainly for the language, but they should have apologized because they are the news, and the guy was right. They were jumping to conclusions, they were unaware of what was going on, and then Thursday was even worse.

 

Reddit started going crazy when the MIT thing happened, so I joined a police scanner feed from Boston. The information listed there, then what was showing on mainstream news? wow. That really cemented for me, they have no clue.

 

They ended up losing track of the second guy because they were particularly crafty and created bedlam (no other word to describe what I heard on the scanner), pipe bombs being used as grenades, automatic weapons, road flares (this is how the second guy confused the helicopters), eventually the helicopter ended up grounded due to weather (fog).

 

I have chosen not to watch the news for years, and after being interested in the events this last week, I am reminded why. They spend 5 minutes giving 1 grain of information (indeed 2 bombs were used in Monday's attack, and it was in Boston) then spend the remaining 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day editorializing and giving inaccurate information from unknown sources. At least when someone online posts a picture, I can do a quick google search, or click their source link to see where the information originated and whether it's really accurate.

 

That was long winded realization.

 

This guy is accused of doing some heinous things, and it was a heinous act, but I hope he is treated like an American citizen (cause he is), if it ends up that he's treated as an enemy combatant, I'll be very disappointed in the government. It would be a horrible precedent. I really don't think they will do that. I hope they won't do that, but it's sad that people even have to discuss the possibility that an American citizen would be treated as such.

 

My other mild disappointment was how the door to door searches were conducted in Boston, they should have walked up to a door, knocked and asked if there was suspicious activity, or if someone had broken into their house, some of the videos I've seen online are horrifying, and I don't think they fit very well into any clause while chasing after a fugitive.

[kylejack]

Yes, listening to the scanner really revealed how bad they are at their job. They were making all kinds of misstatements such as Anderson Cooper saying "no federal authorities are on the scene yet" when I had heard on the scanner over an hour before that FBI, ATF, and DHS were all there. I was listening hours before MIT because I thought showing the suspects' faces on TV would flush them out. The news was trying to pin a 7-11 robbery on the brothers, but it was stated quite clearly on scanner that the suspect for that crime was a 200 pound black male wearing a cowboy hat.

[brijonmang]

After this sequence I'm left with a realization.

 

The realizations are that mainstream news media have no idea what they are doing, they don't care about the factual nature of the information they publish, and there's no way for me to validate the source.

 

On Monday I was keeping updated through some websites (reddit mainly) that were posting facts as they happened through police scanners. It was obvious (from others in the office who were getting their info from CNN, or Fox) that mainstream news had no clue. I think one CNN reporter summed it up fairly well for everyone when he said live on the air "We don't know what the f**k is going on". They apologized, mainly for the language, but they should have apologized because they are the news, and the guy was right. They were jumping to conclusions, they were unaware of what was going on, and then Thursday was even worse.

 

Reddit started going crazy when the MIT thing happened, so I joined a police scanner feed from Boston. The information listed there, then what was showing on mainstream news? wow. That really cemented for me, they have no clue.

 

They ended up losing track of the second guy because they were particularly crafty and created bedlam (no other word to describe what I heard on the scanner), pipe bombs being used as grenades, automatic weapons, road flares (this is how the second guy confused the helicopters), eventually the helicopter ended up grounded due to weather (fog).

 

I have chosen not to watch the news for years, and after being interested in the events this last week, I am reminded why. They spend 5 minutes giving 1 grain of information (indeed 2 bombs were used in Monday's attack, and it was in Boston) then spend the remaining 23 hours and 55 minutes of the day editorializing and giving inaccurate information from unknown sources. At least when someone online posts a picture, I can do a quick google search, or click their source link to see where the information originated and whether it's really accurate.

 

That was long winded realization.

 

This guy is accused of doing some heinous things, and it was a heinous act, but I hope he is treated like an American citizen (cause he is), if it ends up that he's treated as an enemy combatant, I'll be very disappointed in the government. It would be a horrible precedent. I really don't think they will do that. I hope they won't do that, but it's sad that people even have to discuss the possibility that an American citizen would be treated as such.

 

My other mild disappointment was how the door to door searches were conducted in Boston, they should have walked up to a door, knocked and asked if there was suspicious activity, or if someone had broken into their house, some of the videos I've seen online are horrifying, and I don't think they fit very well into any clause while chasing after a fugitive.

I agree with you on the way the media operates these days.  Facts and accuracy have taken a backseat to being the first outlet to report on breaking news.  The general public gets misled and rumors or false information spreads like wildfire.  In this case, the New York Post ran a huge photo of two guys at the marathon who they pegged as the suspects.  I had probably 5 people on my Facebook feed sharing the photo calling for their heads when it turns out they were just a couple of kids who had wanted to run part of the race but ended up watching instead.  Something like that puts innocent people in the cross hairs all in the name of being first.

 

However, when it comes to how he will be handled in custody I couldn't care much less how they get the information from the kid - short of physical torture.  He pretty much gave up his rights of a normal citizen when he decided to kill and maim innocent people in an act of terrorism.  He could hold priceless information on whether or not there is some larger force at work or if these two guys just acted alone.  The facts need to be learned as it is potentially a matter of national security at this point.

 

I have not seen the videos of the door to door searches but it was a very specialized scenario.  They were looking for someone that could have been working with other like minded people who would harbor him in their house.  A simple knock on the door and questioning wouldn't really suffice in that situation.

[KinkaidAlum]

CNN has gotten really bad. They try so hard to break the news that they get things wrong... a lot. 

 

I was listening to the police scanner and watching local Boston CBS on the computer all night. That was helpful. I suspected the MIT cop's murder was related to the bombers. Why? Because reddit had shown so many new photos of the suspects that day after the FBI released the pictures that I had already guessed that the guys were North of the river (Cambridge/Somerville).