The Lede is following developments in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 280 others as more people have sought medical treatment in recent days. On Tuesday, funeral services were held for Sean Collier, the M.I.T. police officer who was shot and killed. Federal officials continue to investigate the bombings as the surviving suspect remains in a Boston hospital after being charged Monday for using a weapon of mass destruction.
Brian Snyder/Reuters The coffin of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus patrol officer said to have been killed by the Boston Marathon bombers, was carried into St. Patrick’s Church in Stoneham, Mass., at his funeral Tuesday morning.As the Boston Globe reports, private funeral services were held Tuesday morning for M.I.T. police officer, Sean Collier, 27, who was gunned down in his police car in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, not far from where the suspects lived. Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis described the shooting as an “assassination.â€
Cj Gunther/European Pressphoto Agency Law enforcement officials and their motorcycles lined up outside St. Patrick’s Church in Stoneham, Mass., Tuesday morning for the funeral of Sean Collier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer said to have been killed by the Boston Marathon bombers.The shooting focused the manhunt for the suspects in the Cambridge and Watertown area, leading to a gun battle on a quiet residential street in Watertown. One of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev died while the younger brother, Dzhokhar, escaped until Friday evening when he was captured after hiding in a boat.
On Wednesday, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will attend a memorial service at M.I.T. for the slain officer on the university’s campus that is expected to draw thousands of law enforcement agents from across the country.
Americans were transfixed by the news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing last week, and most continue to say that occasional acts of terrorism will be a part of life in the future in this country, according to two new surveys.
Three-quarters of Americans consider occasional terrorist acts to be part of the nation’s future, up from nearly two-thirds a year ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted Thursday through Sunday, while facts about the investigation and the pursuit of the suspects were still developing.
Americans were divided on whether the government could prevent attacks like the one in Boston, with 49 percent saying it could do more and 45 percent saying there was not much it could do. Still, 6 in 10 said the government had made the country safer from terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, while about a third said its actions had not had much of an effect. Republicans were more likely than Democrats or independents to say the government’s steps have increased security.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans said they followed news about the Boston attack very closely, expressing as much interest as they did for events like the 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington area, the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003 and the Wall Street bailout in 2008. In 2001, nearly 8 in 10 Americans said they were following news of the Sept. 11 attacks very closely.
While television was the source most widely turned to for information, nearly half of Americans said they followed the Boston news online or on a mobile device. And despite a number of factual missteps by news organizations during the week, 72 percent of Americans rated the news coverage as excellent or good.
A Washington Post poll released on Monday and conducted last Wednesday and Thursday, while the suspects were still at large, found that a majority of Americans were concerned that there would be more major terrorist attacks in the United States.
Nearly a third of Americans said they were worried about future attacks a great deal, up from about 2 in 10 in 2008. But most Americans continued to say they were not concerned about the possibility of an attack in their own community. Only 6 percent said they had changed their daily activities after the marathon bombing; after the Sept. 11 attacks, 53 percent said they had altered their daily lives.
The Post poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said terrorists would find a way to stage major attacks no matter what the federal government did.
Both polls were conducted by telephone nationwide using land lines and cellphones. The Pew poll was conducted among 1,002 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. The Post poll was conducted among 588 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.
â€" Allison Kopicki
The number of people being treated from injuries related to last week’s twin bombings at the Boston Marathon has risen from an initial estimate of 170 to 282, according to a report in The Boston Globe. The increase comes as people have started seeking treatment for problems that many assumed would go away on their own, like hearing loss or minor shrapnel wounds, doctors told The Globe.
“One of the best examples is hearing issues,†said Nick Martin, a spokesman for the Boston Public Health Commission. “People might have first thought their hearing problems would be temporary.†Instead, hearing loss or continuous ringing or buzzing in their ears remained. Others sought delayed care for minor shrapnel wounds.
State health officials told The Globe that 48 people remained hospitalized in the greater Boston area on Tuesday, including two who remain in critical condition: a 7-year-old girl at Boston Children’s Hospital and a man in his 60s at Boston Medical Center.
All of the injured who made it to hospitals survived, and the only wounded person connected to the attacks to arrive at a hospital and later die was one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Nevertheless, doctors have cautioned that the survivors of the bombing face a long recovery, according to The Globe.
Still, many of the patients â€" among them 14 who had limbs amputated â€" are facing daunting recoveries. The 7-year-old girl remains in intensive care and had surgery last week for extensive leg injuries.
“She’ll recover, and I expect that within the next couple of days she’ll come off the critical list,†said Dr. David Mooney, director of the trauma program at Boston Children’s who has been involved in her treatment. “She’s much better than she was; her improvement has been slow and steady.â€
