An eight-year-old boy among the dead was today named as Martin Richard from Dorchester, Massachusetts.
The little boy was killed as he was standing at the finishing line, alongside his mother Denise Richard and two siblings, waiting to give his marathon-running father a hug.
Friends held a vigil last night at the local Tavolo Restaurant in Dorchester for Martin and his mother and sister, who suffered “grievous” injuries.After Martin reportedly walked out to hug his father as he crossed the finishing line, the little boy went back to rejoin his mom and siblings - at which point the first bomb went off.
Reports suggest that his mother was terribly injured and his sister's leg was blown off in the devastating explosion.
The blasts at 2.50pm local time — flashes of burning orange followed by acrid smoke that billowed for 50ft — were captured in TV footage that chilled America. Two more devices were discovered and made safe by police experts.
Ambulances and fire engines swarmed into Boston’s Copley Square along with armed cops to find the pavements drenched with blood and people lying in agony.
Some victims needed to have limbs amputated following the atrocity — six days before the London Marathon.
Aerial footage of the blast site showed the pavement strewn with blood, glass and debris the blasts, ten seconds apart, erupted from litter bins.
Hospitals reported at least 144 people are being treated, at least 17 of them in critical condition and 25 in serious condition. At least eight of the patients are children.
Doctors are "pulling ball bearings out of people in the emergency room" an expert said, suggesting the bombs were designed to propel shrapnel.
Last night, around 20 police, federal officials and bomb squad members searched the apartment of a “person of interest” after witnessing an erratic driver circling past the State Police barracks a number of times.
The man was pulled over and displayed a “nervous demeanour”, according to a reported source.
The driver then led police and FBI to a home in the area of Ocean Avenue and Beach Street, which was then descended upon by Boston Police K-9 units, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Homeland Security investigations. There remains a large police presence at the home in the Revere area of Boston. Sources said it is related to the bombings.
Boston cops took several empty brown paper bags – normally used to store evidence – into the building and left with them full afterwards.
Last night cops were probing links to gun fanatics furious at curbs following December’s Sandy Hook school massacre. The marathon had been dedicated to the 26 shot dead.
It was claimed that police had surveillance video of someone bringing a number of backpacks to the area.
Investigators warned police to be on the lookout for a "darker-skinned or black male" with a possible foreign accent in connection with the attack.
The man was seen with a black backpack and sweatshirt and was trying to get into a restricted area about five minutes before the first explosion.
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