Boston bombings: FBI appeals for help finding two suspects - as it happened

We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage of developments in Boston. Here's a summary of where things stand:

The FBI released photos and videos of two suspects in the marathon bombings, to be found in posts just prior to this summary. The bureau asked for the public's help in identifying and locating the two men pictured, designated as "suspect 1" in a dark cap and "suspect 2" in a white cap. The bureau encouraged anyone with possible information about the suspects to call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 800-225-5334, or to visit the web site bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov. No detail is too small, DesLauriers said.

The significant development in the case was announced just 74 hours after the attack. DesLauriers said the FBI had initially fingered one person of interest and then, through a diligent process of cross-checking, picked out a second man. He said the FBI is working with partner agencies around the world in the case. Video released by the bureau shows the two men walking one behind the other on a sidewalk. DesLauriers said only the images provided by the FBI should be used in attempts to identify the suspects.

DesLauriers said the public does not face any current threat, but he also warned that the two men should be considered "armed and dangerous" and that no one should approach them or attempt to apprehend them.

The seeming breakthrough came on a day when the president and first lady attended an interfaith service at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where the president delivered a rousing speech thanking the city for its example of courage and expressing his faith in its comeback. Addressing the culprits, Obama said, "We will find you. We will hold you accountable. But more than that our fidelity to our own way of life, to a free and open society, will only be stronger."

The president visited bombing victims at Massachusetts General Hospital, where 11 patients were still admitted, 5 were in serious condition, and 6 were in fair condition. The Boston Globe has updated its list of victims of the marathon bombings. Thirty-eight victims are currently listed, with name, age, hometown, nature of injury and source of information. Additional victims still being treated at hospital are not yet listed.

DesLauriers says there is no further danger to the public, although earlier he says the "suspects" - he alternately referred to them as suspects and persons of interest – were "considered to be armed and extremely dangerous."

The news conference adjourns.

Here are additional images of "suspect 2," released by the FBI:

DesLauriers said that identifying those responsible for the Boston bombings is now the FBI's "highest priority", DesLauriers says. "This is our focus now."

The only one observed planting what we believe to be the device is suspect number 2, with the white cap, he says. "At this time these are people of interest to the FBI," he says.

After the attack, suspect two, in the white cap, "proceeded west on Boylston street, and that's all we know right now," DesLauriers says.

Here is a photo of the two suspects provided by the FBI. Suspect 1 is at left. 

DesLauriers warns that photos of the suspects, on FBI.gov, should be the only ones used in attempts to ID them.

"We know the public will play a critical role in identifying and locating these individuals," DesLauriers says.

He says no bit of information is too small.

DesLauriers warned the public not to approach the suspects.

We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous. No one should approach them. No one should attempt to apprehend them on their own.

He urges members of the public to call 1-800-CALL-FBI, 800-225-5334.

Or visit the web site bostonmarathontips.fbi.gov.

The FBI has posted this video on YouTube.

The FBI agent in charge of the investigation, Rick DesLauriers, begins the news conference, and announces a public appeal for two suspects. He says:

Within our last day or so, we initially developed a single person of interest. Not knowing whether that person was working alone or in concert, we obviously worked with extreme purpose to make that determination.

DesLauriers says all arms of the FBI worldwide worked to identify all potential suspects.

The FBI developed a second suspect. Today we are enlisting the public's help to identify the suspects.

He unveils placards showing the suspects. "Suspect 1 is wearing a dark hat. Suspect 2 is wearing a white hat."

DesLauriers says suspect 2 put down a bag in front of Forum restaurant "The two walked together in the crowd on Boylston [street]", he says.

The scene inside the commonwealth conference room at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston, as reporters wait for the FBI news conference to begin:

The FBI is preparing its news conference. Agents have brought two easels into the room, cloaked in black. 

The Guardian's Ed Pilkington is at the news conference.

Still an active crime scene.

View image in fullscreen

The 5pm ET FBI press conference appears still to be on, for the moment.

The Boston Globe has updated its list of victims of the marathon bombings. Thirty-eight victims are currently listed, with name, age, hometown, nature of injury and source of information.

This morning the Globe reported that 62 people remained at Boston hospitals Wednesday evening.

Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital are talking to reporters about the president's visit earlier today.

Update: TV reporter Julie Loncich notes the doctor on the right, David King, is the surgeon referred to by the president in his speech. King finished the marathon an hour before the first explosion and came to to the hospital as soon as he heard. Pictured at left is Alice Gervasini, RN.

Both the New York Times and the Boston globe have begun crowd-sourcing projects to identify people in the vicinity of the marathon bombs when they went off. The Times version is here.

The Globe version allows users to read witnesses' descriptions of what they saw and felt. Dots mark each witness' location. Mousing over the dots reveals their stories.

The family of bombing victim Krystle Campbell, 29, has issued a statement:

Medford, Massachusetts – Our family is devastated by the loss of our daughter Krystle. She was an incredible and loving sister, daughter, niece, granddaughter and friend. Her presence will be missed more deeply than words can express.

We are so grateful for the efforts of the first responders, doctors, nurses and the many other individuals who aided not only Krystle, but the many others who were injured or killed in Monday’s senseless attack.

Furthermore, we are thankful for the outpouring of prayers, love, and support from our friends and families, the great community of Medford, the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the nation and the world.

At this time, we ask to be allowed to grieve privately and thank everyone for your understanding.

The Campbell Family

(via Boston.com)

The FBI has announced a news conference to take place at 5pm.

Yesterday the FBI postponed a scheduled news conference repeatedly before canceling it.

Former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is scheduled to appear on CNN this evening to talk about the Boston Marathon attacks, Talking Points Memo reports. Tune in at 6pm. Romney is to speak to Wolf Blitzer.

The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt speaks to victims of the attack in Boston:

Diane Bensel and Laura Hartzell were both injured in the first explosion by the Boston marathon finishing line, but bravely headed to Boston's cathedral on Thursday, joining crowds who gathered to honour those killed and hurt.

The full text of President Barack Obama's powerful speech at this morning's interfaith prayer service is here.

This morning we noted that the New York Post had recklessly placed on its cover a picture of two young men not implicated in the Boston attack and labeled them BAG MEN in its headline.

Now the Post is in damage control mode, and it is more than a little confusing. One one hand, the editor, Col Allan, has issued a statement defending the cover, saying, "We did not identify them as suspects." On the other hand, the Post has published a news story saying the two men have been "cleared by investigators."

If they were never suspects, how could they be cleared? If they were never suspects, in fact, why do we know their names and why were their pictures published on the cover of a newspaper with a print circulation of more than half a million?

ABC News has spoken with one of the young men, a 17-year-old.

[name redacted]'s younger brother, who declined to be identified, said that it made his mother "sick and upset" that her son had been connected to the tragedy."

"It made her think he had done something wrong," the teen's younger brother said. "My brother is not the bomber." 

The full statement from Allan, the Post editor, was obtained by Salon:

We stand by our story. The image was emailed to law enforcement agencies yesterday afternoon seeking information about these men, as our story reported. We did not identify them as suspects.

Does the New York Post not realize that publishing pictures on its front page of non-guilty, innocent civilian bystanders to the race, and publishing further pictures inside the newspaper with red circles around those bystanders' heads, not only serves no journalistic purpose but actually makes a bad situation worse by contributing to a climate of public confusion, fearmongering and, in this case, bigoted suspicion? 

Will the New York Post please just stop?

Bruce Mendelsohn of Cambridge was in an office three floors above the race and snapped a picture of the aftermath (warning: graphic) that quickly went viral. He later described what happened to the Guardian.

Today he met the president:

(thanks @katierogers)

Next stop for the Obamas: the hospital. CBS News:

Massachusetts General Hospital gave an update of patient conditions this morning: 11 patients are still admitted, 5 are in serious condition, 6 are in fair condition.

Separately, a 5-year-old boy has emerged from critical condition at Boston Medical Center, according to the chief of trauma services, Peter Burke, quoted by the Boston Globe.

“I think he’s gonna be okay, and that’s great,” said Burke at a press briefing Thursday morning.

The boy suffered soft tissue injuries to his extremities and “significant pulmonary injuries,” Burke said. The pulmonary injuries, he said, were likely caused either by compression from the blast or from being thrown into something. His mother was injured and is at a different hospital.

Sixteen patients remain at Boston Medical Center, including a 60-year-old man in critical condition. Ten patients are in serious condition and five are in fair condition. Three have been discharged.

Mutual appreciation.

In his prayer service remarks, President Obama referred to the tears of the mother of one of the victims, Krystle Campbell, 29. It turns out that the president and first lady visited with members of Campbell's family at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross before today's service.

After the service, the president visited nearby Cathedral High School, according to a pool report:

Hundreds of people with the Boston Athletic Association filled the small gym. Many wore bright yellow marathon jackets.

Governor Patrick introduced the president. The mayor was seated in a wheelchair next to them. 

The main message, Obama said, was "to say how proud the whole country is of you."

"You've inspired the entire country," he said. "You've inspired the entire world. In the face of tragedy, you displayed the best of the American sprit."

After his very brief remarks, the president shook hands with volunteers.

The Guardian's Adam Gabbatt is outside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where he speaks with two women who were injured in the marathon bombings: 

Diane Bensel is one of those in attendance despite suffering injuries in the first explosion. She had been watching her husband, Kenzo An, complete the marathon, and was walking toward the finish line to congratulate him when the first bomb exploded just a few feet away from her.

"All of a sudden I was just thrown to the ground and glass fell on my head," she said. "I was engulfed in fire briefly and I immediately couldn't hear anything except for high pitched noise."

Two of Bensel's friends picked her up from the ground and they hurried away from the blast. "There was blood running down my face," she said.

In addition to cuts on her head Bensel, 39, suffered deep gashes to her hands and right forearm. She also has a perforated eardrum. The damage to her hearing may be permanent. Even so, she was determined to be in the crowd, with An and with her two friends, Sam Rosen and Laura Hartzell. Hartzell helped rush Bensel to safety despite being injured herself.

"The fact that we were hurt by what happened... I just thought it was important, we all did, that we are part of the moving forward," Bensel said.

Read the full story here.

The city's watching from outside the cathedral too:

(thanks @mccanner)

The service ends with the congregation singing "America the Beautiful." The crowd has been told to stay in place until the president and first lady have exited.

The president is done. The crowd is on its feet again.

A powerful speech. 

"We come together to celebrate life, and to walk our cities, and to cheer our teams," the president says.

Then a line that has the rank of interfaith clergy behind the president on its feet clapping like cheerleaders at a high school pep rally:

"This time next year, on the third Monday in April, the world will return to this great American city to run even harder, and to cheer even louder, for the 118th Boston marathon.

"Bet on it." 

Obama: "They picked the wrong city to do it."

Biggest applause line yet.

"Not here in Boston. Not here in Boston." 

Sustained applause. 

"You've shown us Boston, that in the face of evil, Americans will lift up what's good." [...]

"That's love. That's the message we send to anyone who would do harm to our people

"Yes, we will find you. Yes, you will face justice. We will find you . We will hold you accountable.

"But more than that our fidelity to our own way of life, to a free and open society, will only be stronger. For God has not given us hearts of fear and timidity. But one of power, love, and self-discipline.

"We may get momentarily knocked off our feat. But we'll pick ourselves up. We'll keep going. We will finish the race.

"We can't let something like this stop us. This doesn't stop us. And that's what you've taught us, Boston."

Now frequent applause.

Obama delivers a tribute to each of the three victims killed, with short remembrances of each: Krystle Campbell, 29; Lu Lingzi, 23; and Martin Richard, 8.

"Our hearts are broken for 8-year-old Martin with his big smile and bright eyes," Obama says. "His last hours were as perfect as an 8-year-old boy could hope for. With his family eating ice cream at a sporting event."

The president quotes from a blue posterboard the boy is holding in a widely circulated image.

"No more hurting people. Peace"

Then the president repeats the words:

"No more hurting people. Peace."

Obama continues his paean to Boston, saying it's his city, too:

"I know this because there's a piece of Boston in me. You welcomed me as a young law student across the river. You welcomed Michelle too [applause]. You welcomed me at a convention when I was still a state senator and very few people could pronounce my name right.

"We join you in saying, Boston is my home. For millions of us, what happened on Monday is personal. It's personal."

The president quotes "the poet":

"This town is not just a capital, not just a place. Boston," he said, "is the perfect state of grace."

"And then in an instant the day's beauty was shattered. A moment of celebration became a tragedy.

"We come together to re-attain that state of grace. To show the spirit of this city is undaunted; the spirit of the country will remain un-dented."

"I'm here today with a simple message. Everyone of us has been touched by this attack on your beloved city. Everyone of us stands with you. Because after all it's our beloved city too.

"It's one of America's iconic cities. It's one of the world's great cities.

"One of the reasone the world knows Boston so well is that Boston opens its heart to the world. Over successive generations you've welcomed new arrivals to our shores." 

Obama says the city welcomes immigrants, students, and the greatest talents in the arts, science and research, and spreads "a Boston diaspora" to the world.

"Every third Monday in April you welcome people from all around the world to the hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition." 

"Boston's your hometown but we claim it a little bit too."

Applause.

"We will have accountability without vengeance," Patrick says. "Vigilance without fear. And I know that long after the buzz of Boylston street is back and the media has turned its attention elsewhere, that the grace this tragedy exposed is the best of who we are.

"I am honored and humbled to welcome... the president of the United States."

Long applause.

Governor Deval Patrick is now speaking.

He delivers a litany of thanks: for firefighters, police and EMTs; for doctors and trauma nurses, housekeeping staff and "the surgeon who completed the marathon and kept on running to his operating room." He thanks law enforcement personnel. 

"I'm thankful for Mayor Menino. Who started Monday morning –"

and here Patrick is interrupted by applause.

"– who started Monday frustrated that he couldn't be at the finish line, and later that afternoon checked himself out of the hospital to be there for our city."

Patrick thanks the president and first lady for a "steadfast support and presence." The crowd applauds that line too.

Patrick says he's thankful perhaps most of all for the "countless number of people in this city and commonwealth who, in the aftermath of this senseless violence, let their first instinct be kindness."

Here's a sure winner in Boston: "Massachusetts invented America," Patrick says. Big applause.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is performing. Live stream here.

President Obama will meet today with victims of the Boston attacks and with the families of those injured or killed, a spokesman told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Massachusetts. The president was also expected to meet with first responders.

The president personally worked on remarks he will deliver at the cathedral, deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said: "I know this is something that the President has spent a lot of time personally working on."

Late Wednesday the president signed a disaster declaration for the state of Massachusetts to make federal resources readily available to state and local officials. Before Obama's departure from Washington, homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco briefed him on the Boston investigation, a pool report said.

Reverend Roberto Miranda, senior pastor of the Congregacion Leon de Juda in Roxbury outside Boston, has just completed a reflection.

"God's love will yet have the last word," he says. "God has not forsaken Boston. God has not forsaken our nation. He merely weaves a beautiful, bright tapestry of goodness, that only includes a few dark stands."

The next reflection will be from Cardinal Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston. 

President Obama is scheduled to speak near the end of the service. The program is here. 

Rabbi Ronne Friedman, senior rabbi of Temple Israel of Boston, has just given a reading from the book of Psalms.

Now Nasser S. Weddady, chair of the New England Interfaith Council and civil rights outreach director of the American Islamic Congress, is offering a reflection. 

"Now, all of us need to take up this pledge. We all have service to perform," he says. "...We dedicate ourselves to the great task before us: to heal and to rebuild as a shining city on a hill."

You can watch here:

A Guardian photo gallery from the interfaith prayer service is here.

Mayor Menino rose from his wheelchair to speak. After the attack Monday, Menino, 70, released himself early from a hospital, where he had been recuperating from a leg fracture.

Menino has been mayor of Boston since 1993. "I have never loved it and its people more than I do today," he says.

(h/t: @katierogers)

Inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, from a Globe reporter:

The interfaith prayer conference has begun. Boston mayor Tom Menino is about to speak. 

Boston.com has a live stream of the service.

False reports yesterday that a suspect had been arrested in the Boston attacks damaged the credibility of the news outlets that carried the reports and created waves of public confusion and frustration.

It appeared to be a low point for the media. But now that low point has been surpassed.

The New York Post on Thursday has printed on its cover an image of two men standing together at the marathon under the headline "BAG MEN: Feds seek these two pictured at Boston marathon." The image shows two young men, one with a duffle bag and one wearing a backpack, talking to one another.

The problem – a very big problem, for any media organization that would aspire to meet the most basic standard of accuracy – is that neither man appears to be a suspect in this attack.

Gawker points out that not only did CBS News confirm, after the Post cover emerged, that the men pictured are not "suspects"; crowd-sourced investigations on reddit and other sites a day earlier had identified the men – kids, actually – and found them to be "incredibly unlikely suspects." 

Gawker's Max Read writes:

But thanks to their ability to do really basic internet detective work, they managed to figure out pretty quickly that the guy in the blue track jacket almost certainly isn't a bomber. All they had to do was find his Facebook. I was able to do it pretty quickly: He's a Moroccan-American kid, a local high-school soccer player and track runner (possibly he and his friend's track outfits could have been a tipoff that they were actually interested in the race?) who works at Subway and likesHow High and The Hunger Games. On Monday, he took a couple of geekily enthusiastic photos of himself at the marathon. 

Unfortunately it's not the first example of egregious misreporting by the Post on the Boston attacks. The paper reported on Monday that 12 had been killed in the attack and that authorities were seeking a "Saudi man" – who turned out to be a wounded student, and by no stretch of anyone's imagination, apart from the employees of the New York Post, a suspect.

The president and first lady have arrived in Boston and are on their way to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, according to pool reports.

In testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano confirmed that authorities would "like to speak with" two people appearing in video footage of the attack sites:

We have been collecting video from a variety of sources. There's lots and lots. There is some video that has raised the question of those that the FBI would like to speak with. I would not characterize them as "suspects" as a technical term.

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of developments in Boston.

The FBI is seeking more than one person in connection with Monday's double-bombing of the Boston marathon. According to the New York Times and Boston Globe, quoting "a person" and "an official" briefed on the investigation, video footage shows clear images of two people carrying black bags at the site of each explosion.

It was unclear whether authorities would release those images or seek public help in identifying the men. The FBI repeatedly postponed and ultimately canceled a press conference announced for yesterday. Today the Boston police department advises the public to "check back for public announcement."

The president and first lady are attending an interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston's South End to begin at 11am. The president is expected to speak, as are Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick and Boston mayor Tom Menino. The cellist Yo-Yo Ma will perform. The program is here.

The event is open to the public, on a first-come, first-served basis. Many people in a long line waiting for a ticket did not get one.

 Sixty-two people hurt in the blasts remained at Boston hospitals Wednesday evening, according to the Boston Globe; 12 were in critical condition. Fourteen patients have undergone amputations, in some cases multiple amputations.