Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, April 18, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Boston Marathon Terror Continues With Bomb Threat to Courthouse

BOSTON (CN) - Still tense from the Boston Marathon bombing Monday that left three dead, authorities cited a new threat Wednesday as they evacuated the federal courthouse.

Media had been swarming the building earlier that day after CNN reported that a suspect had been taken into custody. CNN later retracted that report, which apparently stemmed from surveillance video that has given law enforcement a glimpse of possible suspects.

Current media reports indicate that one video shows a white man leaving a backpack near the finish line. There is also reportedly a second video or image of "two men with two backpacks."

Reporters believed a suspect would be transported to the Joe Moakley Federal Courthouse if he had indeed been taken into custody. They were at the federal building on the waterfront when the bomb threat came in at about 3 p.m.

The building, which includes a day care center, was placed in a code red. Adults, court staff and attorneys ran from the building, as others pushed very small children out in cribs on rollers.

The Department of Homeland Security, Boston police, and bomb-sniffing dogs are investigating the threat and securing the area.

Authorities still do not have a suspect in mind for the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, which left three dead and 176 injured.

The bombs reportedly killed an 8-year old Martin Richard, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, and Lu Lingzi, a Boston University graduate student who was a Chinese citizen.

Several witnesses reported seeing victims with missing limbs. Authorities have said that the explosives, which were set off at two points on Boylston Street, were filled with ball bearings.

A report of a third explosion at the JFK Library and Museum was ultimately chalked up to an unrelated electrical fire.

The Boston Marathon is a badge of pride for the city, and held every year on Patriots' Day, celebrated on the third Monday in April to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord and "the shot heard around the world."

President Barack Obama has confirmed that the FBI is treating the bombing as an act of terrorism.

"What we don't yet know, however, is who carried out this attack, or why; whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual," he said Tuesday.

Categories / Uncategorized

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...