Boston suspects planned more attacks, police say

BOSTON

Police officers keep watch on tourists at Times Square. The surviving suspect in the Boston bombings remains in serious condition in the hospital, officials say. REUTERS photo

The surviving suspect in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing remained unable to speak with a gunshot wound to the throat, while the city’s police commissioner said the two suspects had such a large cache of weapons that they were probably planning other attacks.

Federal authorities want to question the wife of the suspect who died after a gun battle with police, her lawyer said. Katherine Russell Tsarnaev learned her husband was a suspect by seeing it on TV, Amato DeLuca told The Associated Press late April 21. Authorities found many unexploded homemade bombs at the scene of the gun battle early April 19, along with more than 250 rounds of ammunition.

‘More individuals were targeted’

The stockpile was “as dangerous as it gets in urban policing,” Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. “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,” he told CBS. Davis told Fox News that authorities cannot be positive there are not more explosives somewhere that have not been found. Investigators have not offered a motive for the marathon attack.

The suspects in last week’s twin bombings at the marathon finish line that killed three and wounded more than 180 are two ethnic Chechen brothers from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade - 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan. Their motive remained unclear.

The older brother was killed in gun battle. The younger brother was still in serious condition after his capture from a tarp-covered boat in a suburban backyard.

ABC and NBC news networks reported that Dzhokhar was awake and responding in writing to questions put to him by authorities. Other U.S. news sources, including CNN, said Tsarnaev, who was shot in the throat and the leg prior to his arrest, was still sedated in the intensive care unit with a breathing tube down his throat.

Authorities told Reuters that the sedation, and a tongue injury from the throat wound itself, had left him incapable of speech and precluded questioning by investigators.