At 2:50 p.m. on Monday, Boston fell silent to honor the victims of a tragedy that unhinged the city, CNN reports. A minute later, bells rang to mark the Boston Marathon bombings one week ago.As Americans reflect on the attacks, the lone surviving suspect remains hospitalized with a tube down his throat, unable to verbalize what he was thinking when a pair of bombs killed three people and wounded more than 170 others. While authorities say Bostonians can rest easier now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in custody, nagging questions hinder any total sense of security: Why would the assailants want to kill or maim throngs of innocent civilians, and could this happen again?In the tumultuous days since the bombings, Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan killed a university police officer, led authorities on a harrowing chase and hurled explosives at police, authorities said.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a gun battle with officers in which more than 200 rounds were exchanged. His official cause of death has not been released; he also had explosives on his body and was run over by his brother during the melee, officials said.Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found less than a day later, hiding in a boat and bleeding in a man’s backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts.Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said he believed the brothers were planning another attack before the shootout with police disrupted their plans. “We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at the scene – the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower – that they were going to attack other individuals,” Davis said Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” Authorities believe the brothers bought bomb components locally but believe their guns came from elsewhere, another federal law enforcement official said.
The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the case, said authorities are trying to trace the guns.Investigators are also trying to determine whether anyone else was behind the bombings.While investigators piece together the brothers’ actions leading up to the marathon bombings, details have emerged suggesting the elder Tsarnaev was turning radical.An FBI official said agents interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government. The FBI said Russia claimed that he was a follower of radical Islam and that he had changed drastically since 2010.But the Russian government’s request was vague, a U.S. official and a law enforcement source said Sunday.
The lack of specifics limited how much the FBI was able to investigate Tamerlan, the law enforcement official said.Tamerlan Tsarnaev apparently became increasingly radical in the past three or four years, according to an analysis of his social media accounts and the recollections of family members.
