Boston Marathon Bombing

On April 15, 2013, two homemade pressure cooker bombs detonated near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, [killing three people and injuring an estimated 264 others](https://apnews.com/article/boston-marathon-bombing-anniversary-tsarnaev) in one of the most significant acts of domestic terrorism on American soil since the September 11 attacks. The attack was carried out by brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic Chechen immigrants who had been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The bombs exploded approximately 12 seconds apart at 2:49 PM near 671 and 755 Boylston Street, in the midst of a crowd of spectators cheering on marathon runners. The three people killed in the blast were Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager; Lu Lingzi, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate student from China; and Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. The injuries to survivors included 16 people who required amputations.

The investigation moved with extraordinary speed. [Within three days, the FBI released surveillance camera images of two suspects on April 18, 2013, asking the public for help identifying them](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-22289437). That same evening, the Tsarnaev brothers killed MIT police officer Sean Collier, 26, in an apparent attempt to steal his service weapon. They then carjacked a Mercedes SUV in Allston, holding the driver hostage before he escaped at a gas station in Cambridge.

[The ensuing manhunt led to a dramatic confrontation in the residential streets of Watertown, Massachusetts, in the early morning hours of April 19](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/04/08/boston-marathon-bombing-a-timeline-of-the-manhunt/). During the Watertown shootout, the brothers exchanged gunfire with police and threw additional explosive devices. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was shot and then run over by his brother as Dzhokhar fled in the carjacked vehicle. Tamerlan was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

The following day, April 19, Governor Deval Patrick issued a shelter-in-place order for the entire Boston metropolitan area, effectively shutting down the city as thousands of law enforcement officers conducted a house-to-house search. Shortly after the lockdown was lifted, Watertown resident David Henneberry discovered a bloodied Dzhokhar hiding in his dry-docked boat. After a tense standoff, Dzhokhar was taken into custody.

The investigation revealed that the brothers had been self-radicalized through online jihadist propaganda. They had constructed the pressure cooker bombs using instructions from an al-Qaeda publication. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had traveled to Dagestan, Russia, in 2012, and the Russian FSB had previously warned both the FBI and CIA about his potential radicalization.

[The bombing transformed security protocols for major public events across the United States and led to the iconic "Boston Strong" movement](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/15/boston-marathon-bombing-10th-anniversary). The annual One Fund Boston, established by then-Mayor Thomas Menino and Governor Patrick, raised more than $80 million for bombing survivors and victims' families.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was charged on April 22, 2013, with using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death, both federal capital charges. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 27, 2013, on 30 counts including use of a weapon of mass destruction, bombing of a public place, and the murder of MIT officer Sean Collier. His trial began in January 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts before Judge George A. O'Toole Jr. [On April 8, 2015, the jury found Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 counts. On May 15, 2015, the jury sentenced him to death on six of the capital counts](https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/15/us/tsarnaev-sentencing/index.html). In July 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the death sentence, citing juror screening issues. [On March 4, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the First Circuit and reinstated the death sentence in a 6-3 decision](https://www.npr.org/2022/03/04/1083867778/supreme-court-tsarnaev-death-sentence-boston-marathon-bombing) (United States v. Tsarnaev). Tsarnaev remains on federal death row at USP Terre Haute. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed during the Watertown confrontation on April 19, 2013.