With a bomb strapped to his chest, one of the Boston Marathon suspects was killed early Friday after he and his accomplice brother robbed a 7-Eleven, shot a police officer to death, carjacked an SUV and hurled explosives in an extraordinary firefight with law enforcement.| The suspects are brothers of Chechen origin with the last name Tsarnaev |
The suspects are brothers of Chechen origin with the last name Tsarnaev, law enforcement officials told NBC News. The suspect at large, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is 19, was born in Kyrgyzstan and has a Massachusetts driver's license, they said. The dead suspect was identified as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, born in Russia.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was run over by a vehicle during the firefight, law enforcement officials told NBC News. Law enforcement officials also told NBC News that the brothers entered the United States with family in 2002 or 2003, and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev became a legal permanent resident in 2007.
The chaotic sequence of events started six hours after the FBI triggered a nationwide manhunt by releasing photos of the suspects, believed responsible for detonating two bombs at the marathon finish line Monday, killing three people and injuring 176.
The suspect at large was described by authorities as light-skinned and with brown, curly hair, and wearing a gray hoodie.
"There is a terrorist on the loose," a law enforcement officer said at a press conference before dawn.
Police shut a 4-mile stretch of streets between Cambridge, Mass., and Watertown because they could be littered with unexploded devices, and they began a door-to-door search in Watertown. A convoy of at least 20 vehicles, including military-style humvees and buses, was seen descending on the town.
More than 1 million people in Boston and the suburbs were ordered to stay inside and lock their doors.
"I just want to speak to the community of Watertown. We need your help now. We are asking everyone to shelter into your place," Watertown Police Chief Edward Deveau said. "The Watertown community has always stood strong. We need them to do that today."
Harvard University, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, other colleges and Boston public schools all closed. Emerson University closed and told students to stay where they were.
Andrew Kitzenberg, who lives in Watertown, said he saw the two men shooting at six police cars from 70 or 80 yards away.
"There was a long exchange of gunfire," told NBC News in an interview. He said that he saw the suspects use what looked like a pressure-cooker bomb.
"I saw them light this bomb. They threw it towards the officers," he said. "It created a significant decoy, and there was smoke that covered our entire street."
Law enforcement officials said the tumult began just before 11 p.m., when the suspects approached a police officer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and shot him in the head. The two then stole the officer's cruiser, robbed a nearby 7-Eleven, carjacked a Mercedes SUV and briefly kidnapped the driver, the sources said.
The suspects threw explosives out the window during the chase that followed, they said. A Boston transit police officer was shot and wounded, authorities said.
The dead suspect -- the man in the black hat from the FBI photos -- had an improvised explosive device strapped to his chest, law enforcement officials said.
Kitzenberg said that the firefight ended when one of the shooters ran toward the Watertown officers and ultimately fell to the ground. Kitzenberg said he could not tell whether the man was tackled or had been shot. The other drove the SUV through a line of police offcers at the end of the street, he said.