Boston Marathon bombing was a terrorist attack that took place in Boston on April 15, 2013. Two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the historic Boston Marathon foot race. The explosions killed 3 people and injured more than 200. The terrorist suspects later killed a law enforcement officer and wounded several others. One of the suspects was killed during an encounter with police. The other was captured.
Background.
The Boston Marathon takes place each year on Patriots’ Day, a state holiday celebrated in Massachusetts on the third Monday in April. The race stretches 26 miles 385 yards (42.2 kilometers) from the suburb of Hopkinton to Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Large numbers of spectators line the course to demonstrate community spirit and cheer for the runners. The first Boston Marathon was held in 1897.
The 2013 bombing.
The 117th running of the marathon was on April 15, 2013. Groups of participants crossed the starting line between about 9 a.m. and 10:40 a.m. The leading runners completed the race around noon. Thousands more continued in the afternoon, and crowds of spectators gathered at the finish. The finish line was near the Boston Public Library in Back Bay.
At 2:50 p.m., a bomb exploded on Boylston Street, at a point on the course about 100 feet (30 meters) west of the finish line. A second bomb exploded about 12 seconds later, roughly 500 feet (150 meters) west of the first explosion. Emergency personnel, spectators, and race volunteers rushed to help the people wounded in the blasts.
Investigation and manhunt.
Local and federal law enforcement agencies quickly launched an investigation into the attack. Authorities pored over surveillance video footage of the bombing sites and collected digital photographs from the public.
On April 18, authorities released images of two suspects. The suspects were later identified as 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev. Late that evening, the Tsarnaevs shot and killed a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They then stole a car during a carjacking. The police soon located the vehicle in Watertown, west of Cambridge, and pursued it. Police engaged the suspects in a gunfight around 1 a.m. on April 19. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from wounds sustained in the encounter. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev avoided capture.
Massachusetts authorities soon issued a “shelter in place” order for Boston-area communities. The order required residents to stay at home behind locked doors while the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev continued. Local police and federal authorities set up a perimeter (boundary) to contain the suspect’s movements. The “shelter in place” order was lifted on the evening of April 19. Soon after, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was discovered hiding on a boat in a Watertown driveway. Police arrested Tsarnaev, who had suffered serious wounds.
Aftermath.
Additional information about the suspects became available after the manhunt concluded. The Tsarnaevs were ethnic Chechens. The older brother had been born in the Soviet Union, in what is now the Russian Republic of Kalmykia. The younger brother had been born in Kyrgyzstan. They lived for a brief time in the Dagestan region of Russia before they came to the United States in the early 2000’s. The younger brother was a student and a naturalized U.S. citizen. Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s application for citizenship had been under review.
Federal authorities soon charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with using a weapon of mass destruction and the malicious destruction of property resulting in death. The charges were capital crimes—that is, the suspect could face the death penalty if convicted. A federal grand jury formally indicted Tsarnaev on 30 criminal counts—17 of which were capital charges. Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to the charges. In 2014, schoolmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were convicted of obstructing justice in the federal investigation and misleading investigators.
Tsarnaev’s trial began in January 2015. During the trial, Tsarnaev’s lawyers acknowledged his participation in the crimes. In efforts to spare their client the death penalty, defense lawyers argued that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had acted under the influence of domineering older brother Tamerlan. In April, a federal jury found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 charges against him and later sentenced him to death. A judge formally sentenced Tsarnaev to 6 death sentences, 20 sentences of life in prison, and 4 sentences of 7 to 25 years.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers filed an appeal to overturn both the guilty verdict and death sentence, arguing that media coverage in the case had made it impossible for him to receive a fair trial in Boston. In January 2016, a federal judge denied Tsarnaev’s appeal. In July 2020, however, a federal appeals court overturned Tsarnaev’s death sentence, ruling that the jury had not been properly screened for potential biases. The court ordered a new penalty phase to the trial, allowing a new jury to determine whether Tsarnaev should be executed. In March 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States reinstated Tsarnaev’s death sentence.
See also Terrorism.
