A law enforcement source told CBS: ‘They see him running away from the device. Now, a reasonable person would be running away. But this person had noticed him before. This is a civilian — chases him down, tackles him, turns him over to the Boston police.
‘The individual is being looked at [and] was suffering from burn injury. That means this person was pretty close to wherever this blast went off, but not so close as to suffer the serious injuries that other people did.’
Though many patients were treated for minor cuts and scrapes, doctors have also been ‘pulling ball bearings and projectiles out of people in the emergency room’. This suggests the bombs were designed to propel shrapnel, one terrorism expert briefed on the Boston blasts told CNN.
Rep Pete King, a Long Island republican who chairs the house counterterrorism subcommittee told ABC news that the bombings had ‘all the trademarks of an al Qaeda attack’.
Defense secretary Chuck Hagel today called the bombings a ‘cruel act of terror’ and said it will be ‘approached as an act of terror’.