Mourners attend a candlelight vigil Tuesday night in Dorchester, the hometown of 8-year-old Boston Marathon explosion victim Martin Richard. Credit: Brian Snyder/Reuters
Thousands of people gathered at vigils Tuesday night to pay tribute to the victims of the Boston Marathon explosions, as investigators continued their search for whoever planted the bombs.
Garvey Park in Dorchester was where 8-year-old Martin Richard would play. Tuesday night, the park was filled with children and adults holding candles in honor of the boy who was killed while standing at the finish line. His mother and sister were critically hurt.
“We are heartbroken at the death of our daughter,” Campbell’s mother, Patty, said. “She was a wonderful person. Everyone that knew her loved her. She had a heart of gold. She was always smiling.”
The Chinese Consulate in New York said in a statement that the graduate student’s family did not want to release her name. However, a state-run newspaper in the city of Shenyang identified her as Lu Lingzi, according to the Associated Press.
Earlier Tuesday evening, hundreds of people lit candles and sang “Amazing Grace” in a vigil on Boston Common.
“Just reminding us that everyone is here to support each other and even people who don’t know each other are hugging and talking and getting to know each other just because of this happening,” Northeastern student Tess Nikolaidis told NECN.
President Barack Obama, who will travel to Boston on Thursday for a memorial service, has called the bombings an “act of terror.” It was the worst bombings on U.S. soil since security was stepped up following the suicide hijack attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
No suspects were in custody and there were no claims of responsibility.
While still unable to conclude whether a group or individuals were responsible for the attacks that also wounded 176, and whether they were foreign or American, investigators gathered enough evidence at the crime scene to slightly narrow their search.
“The person who did this was someone’s friend, co-worker or neighbor,” said Richard DesLauriers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge in Boston. “Somebody knows who did this.”
The two blasts struck seconds apart Monday at the finish line of the race, maiming victims with shrapnel-packed bombs that investigators suspect were contained in pressure cookers. Seventeen people remained in critical condition.
Evidence was being reconstructed at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., DesLauriers said.
Among the items recovered were pieces of black nylon that could be from a backpack, fragments of ball bearings and nails, and possibly the remains of a pressure cooker device, DesLauriers said.
Bomb scene pictures produced by the Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force and released Tuesday show the remains of an explosive device including twisted pieces of a metal container, wires, a battery and what appears to be a small circuit board.
One picture shows a few inches of charred wire attached to a small box, and another depicts a half-inch nail and a zipper head stained with blood. Another shows a Tenergy-brand battery attached to black and red wires through a broken plastic cap. Several photos show a twisted metal lid with bolts.
In addition, WHDH television showed a picture of an unattended, light-colored bag on the ground right at one of the bomb sites before the explosion. The bag was gone in a picture from a similar angle taken after the blasts. Authorities had yet to comment publicly on the significance of the pictures.
With additional reporting by Reuters.Follow Metro Boston on Twitter: @MetroBos
