British Prime Minister David Cameron, right, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick visit the Boston Marathon memorial on Copley Square on Tuesday. Credit: Nicolaus Czarnecki/Metro
British Prime Minister David Cameron paid his respects to the Boston Marathon bombing victims Tuesday morning, visiting a makeshift memorial on Copley Square along with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
Cameron is in Boston to discuss how law enforcement and other officials responded to the explosions, including what strategies could be used in the U.K.
Three people were killed and 264 injured in the April 15 blasts when two homemade bombs exploded near the race’s finish line.
The memorial was created on Boylston Street near the intersection with Berkeley Street in the hours and days following the bombings. When Boylston was reopened, city officials moved the mementos to Copley Square, where the collection continues to grow.[embedgallery id=150384]
“It’s hard to believe that people can do these things to countries like ours, when we are freedom-loving, when we are democracies, where we do value people’s rights,” Cameron told reporters on Tuesday. “But these things do happen and we have to fight them and challenge them, and that’s what I know you’re going to do right here in Boston.”
The suspected bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are also accused of killing an MIT police officer.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a police shootout three days after the bombings. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held in a federal prison hospital, facing terrorism charges.
“There’s always more to do,” Cameron said. “There is really a vital role for law enforcement, a really vital role for intelligence. There’s a tough side to all of this that we have to get right. But there’s also a side, as I said, of challenging the narrative of violence and extremism that we have to get right, to stop young minds being poisoned by this dreadful radical, extremist narrative, and there’s always more work to do on that.”
Cameron arrived in Boston on Monday afternoon and held private meetings at the State House with Patrick and other Massachusetts leaders. Earlier in the day, Cameron and President Barack Obama discussed the situation in Syria at the White House.
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