I will start by saying that Friday was the craziest day I have ever experienced. All day I exchanged messages with various friends and none of us could find any words appropriate to describe what was happening. Instead, we just kept throwing out, this is crazy, sh*t is going down, this sh*t just got real, and where is he. Of course, sh*t was going down, but sh*t really only got real once. There were a few false alarms, which many of us picked up via police scanners. At two different points you could hear reports of someone on the ground in cuffs, so naturally we all assumed it was the suspect. But, let's rewind for those of you not in Massachusetts.
We went to bed Thursday night with pictures of suspect #1 and suspect #2 released by the FBI. Usually I go to bed around 10:30/11. So, I turned off the t.v. after watching a show on the DVR and went to sleep. Meanwhile, a completely unexpected and really, inexplicable story was beginning to play out. Around 4 a.m. on Friday morning I woke up to the tv on in the bedroom. Ryan never turns the t.v. on upstairs, because he gets up much earlier than I do, albeit never 4 a.m. early. Not being fully awake and still completely unaware, I sleepily asked him what he was doing. His response was simple but effective in waking me up immediately. "Suspect 1 is dead and suspect two is on the run." That sentence did it. I shot up and put on my glasses, now glued to the t.v. screen. As breaking news continued to flash across the screen, ABC news anchors got me up to speed.
The original story went as follows. Around 10:30 Thursday night, suspect 1 and 2 robbed a 7/11 in Cambridge. From there they continued on, shooting an MIT police officer dead in his cruiser, high-jacking a Mercedes SUV, letting the car owner out at a gas station, and continuing on into Watertown, where a shootout occurred. The suspects were throwing bombs and grenades at the police, as well as shooting. Of course, the officers were shooting back, in an attempt to get the suspects down, not necessarily dead, but down. In the course of the shoot-out, suspect 1 was killed. Suspect 2 ditched the SUV and fled on foot. Suspect 1 was taken to Beth Isreal and was declared dead around 1:35 a.m.
From 1:35 to 4 a.m. when I woke up, it didn't seem like much more had progressed. Suspect 2 was thought to be in the Watertown area, though it seemed impossible to find him. Around 5 a.m., the governor locked down all T services, basically eliminating the possibility of anyone on foot fleeing to far. No trains and no buses doesn't leave you a lot of options after all. Soon after, police were asking residents of Watertown and many surrounding towns to Shelter in Place. If you work in a public service, you know that basically means lockdown. Personally, even if that hadn't been the case, if I lived in those towns, I certainly wouldn't have left my house on Friday for anything. There was possibly a crazy person on the loose, with bombs and guns and who knows what else. As the day wore on, more information came out about the two suspects. We learned who the boys were and where the boys had come from. We learned that they were brothers, and that one was a US citizen. News stations went to known family members in the surrounding states, where we learned that their Uncle felt them to be losers, their sister, very nice boys, and their father, angels. We learned that one was 26 and one was 19. We found out that the 19 year old had actually driven over his brother in an attempt to flee after the shoot out. What we didn't learn was why they had planted bombs and more importantly at that moment, WHERE suspect 2 was.
I sat in the house, with the tv on loud enough to hear it in any room, hoping for some information, the report that the suspect had been caught. Police scanners were broadcast over the internet and subsequently taken down, by Boston PD when it was discovered that perhaps the broadcast was compromising the positions of the officers and making it difficult to actually find the suspect. As SWAT teams and 1000s of police officers moved methodically through the neighborhood, searching homes and clearing homes, I think everyone was getting increasingly anxious. The entire town and it's surrounding areas were deserted. Everyone was inside, giving the police officers their streets, something I think everyone was glad to do. (I should hope so anyways.) But yet, no sign of this 19 year old boy. I did all my laundry and cleaned the house a bit, and eventually I couldn't take it anymore, so I went for a run.
My plan all along had been to go for a 10 mile run on Friday morning. When I heard the news though, I couldn't have left the t.v. if I tried. But, by 2:00 pm, I was just tired of watching the same coverage and I'll be honest, I was pretty sure he had escaped. I had no idea how, but I was sure he was gone. So I went for my run, making it 9.5 in an hour and forty five minutes. Not a great time, but at least I did something. Then, I went to the grocery store. I got home around 4. The news was unchanged. Suspect 2 was no where to be found. More texts were exchanged. People were nervous and anxious. A few hours later, city officials and police took Watertown off lockdown. They opened up the T for service, asking people to be vigilant. (There is no way I would've ridden the T that night, but that was just my opinion.) Just as I was texting my friends that it was a disappointing end, I got a message from a different friend that simply said, Channel 7, shots fired in Watertown. I immediately flipped back to the news and put on the police scanner, which was back on air. From that moment, sh*t got real. Really real. You just knew, this was it. They had a thermal scanner of a body in a boat. No one knew if the body was dead or alive, but it was a body, in the boat, which is more than we had in a hours. One or so hours later, the suspect was caught. He was alive and he was in custody. I think we all hoped he would be alive, because we all wanted answers, and two dead suspects would tell us nothing.
All in all, it was the most absurd day I think many of us had ever lived, and that includes 9/11. Not on the same scale, it was just something that had never happened before. Entire cities were locked down so we could catch a criminal. Swarms of police and federal officials were covering the cities. A force like that has never been seen before around here, and honestly, I'm not sure it's ever been seen anywhere. It was a crazy end to a very surreal week. Four people are dead. Four people who did not deserve to die when they did. Four people who were all younger or the same age, as me. Many people are still hospitalized, some are still in critical condition, including one MBTA officer, who was shot right before the shoot out began.
I've heard and read a lot about this manhunt and these two suspects. People wonder how a nice boy went bad. Some people even pity him. To those people, I hope they remember, he killed innocent bystanders. He made a conscious choice to put down a bag with a bomb in it, in a crowd of people, knowing full well the consequences of his actions. Furthermore, he killed and attempted to kill police officers. He is not be pitied. He is not criminally insane, but acted in full possession of his faculties. Anyone who walks into a crowd of people and leaves a bomb beside an 8 year old child, is not to be pitied. You do not have to hate him. Hate will not change history and it will not bring anyone back, but you should not pity him either.
The best I can offer is hope. Hope that he confesses. Hope that he tells us exactly why he did this. Hope that he is, in some way, sorry for the pain he tried to rain down upon a great city. Do not hate, but do not pity. Hope that his story makes you a better person. Hope it makes you treat others with more compassion, lend a hand when someone needs it, and stick together as Boston has done so magnificently this week. Two brothers tried to conquer our city this week, for what, we do not know. But they failed. They failed greater than they could ever have imagined, by creating a community united as one. A community ready to lockdown just so they could be caught. A community ready to say, we will run again, and we will run faster, and longer, just because you thought we couldn't.
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| This is a photo my cousin took Friday night, after suspect 2 was caught. The crosses represent Martin, Lu, and Krystle, though Sean deserves one as well, and may have one by now. This memorial continues to grow each day. Though soon BPD will be moving it to Copely Square, they will not be getting rid of it. Just another way to prove Boston has won. |
And so now, we should go back to normal. Whatever normal can be now, we should return. Though we await answers and justice, life resumes. For most of us. Some will never have the same life again, and for that I am deeply sorry. So can it ever really go, back to normal?
