Tamerlan Tsarnaev Injuries: Doctor Says Dead Bombing Suspect Had Wounds 'Head To Toe'

BOSTON — A doctor involved in treating the Boston Marathon bombing suspect who died in a gunbattle with police says he had injuries head to toe and all limbs intact when he arrived at the hospital.

Dr. David Schoenfeld said 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was unconscious and had so many penetrating wounds when he arrived at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center early Friday that it isn't clear which ones killed him, and a medical examiner will have to determine the cause of death.

The second bombing suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was in serious condition at the same hospital after his capture Friday night. The FBI has not allowed hospital officials to say any more about his wounds or condition.

Schoenfeld lives in the Boston suburb of Watertown and heard explosions from the shootout between the two brothers and police early Friday. He called the hospital to alert staff they likely would be getting injured people, then rushed in to coordinate preparations.

"We had three or four trauma teams in different rooms set up and ready," unsure of whether they would be treating a bombing suspect, injured police or bystanders, Schoenfeld said.

The older Tsarnaev's clothes had been cut off by emergency responders at the scene, so if he had been wearing a vest with explosives, he wasn't by the time he arrived at the hospital, the doctor said.

"From head to toe, every region of his body had injuries," he said. "His legs and arms were intact – he wasn't blown into a million pieces" – but he lost a pulse and was in cardiac arrest, meaning his heart and circulation had stopped, so CPR, or cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, was started.

Schoenfeld did not address police's assertion that Tsarnaev was run over by a car driven by his brother as he fled the gunfire.

The doctor said he couldn't discuss specific treatments in the case except to say what is usually done in such circumstances, including putting a needle in the chest to relieve pressure that can damage blood vessels, and cutting open the chest and using rib-spreaders to let doctors drain blood in the sac around the heart that can put pressure on the heart and keep it from beating.

fter 15 minutes of unsuccessful treatment, doctors pronounced him dead."Once you've done all of those things ... if they don't respond there's really nothing you can do. You've exhausted the playbook," he said.

"We did everything we could" to try to save his life, Schoenfeld said.

How did the medical team react to treating the bombing suspect?

"There was some discussion in the emergency room about who it was. That discussion ended pretty quickly," Schoenfeld said. "It really doesn't matter who the person is. We're going to treat them as best we can."

 

Boston Bombing Suspect Under FBI Surveillance For At Least 3 Years, Mother Says

 
* Mother says she believes sons were framed

* Tells Russian interviewer FBI was monitoring older son

* Both parents says Internet use was monitored (Adds father, details from mother)

By Timothy Heritage

MOSCOW, April 20 (Reuters) - One of the two ethnic Chechens suspected by U.S. officials of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings had been under FBI surveillance for at least three years, his mother said.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the English-language Russia Today state television station in a phone interview, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters, that she believed her sons were innocent and had been framed.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar was captured after a day-long manhunt.

"He (Tamerlan) was 'controlled' by the FBI, like, for three to five years," she said, speaking in English and using the direct English translation of a word in Russian that means monitored.

"They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the Internet he was going to," she said in what Russia Today described as a call from Makhachkala, where she lives in Russia's Dagestan region after returning from the United States.

Tsarnaeva echoed the boys' father, Anzor, who said on Friday that he believed they had been framed. Both suggested in separate interviews that the FBI had made no secret of the fact that at least one of the brothers was being watched.

"I do not believe that my sons could have planned and organised the terrorist act, because they knew U.S. national security services were keeping an eye on them," Anzor Tsarnaev told Russia's Channel One television.

"They (the security services) said 'We know what you eat, what you read on the Internet'," he said, without making clear how the security officers had made contact.

In her interview with Russia Today, Tsarnaeva suggested FBI officers had visited her home when she still lived in the United States and told her that Tamerlan "was really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of him."

"It is really, really a hard thing to hear. And being a mother, what I can say is that I am really sure, I am, like, 100 percent sure, that this is a set-up," she said.

She did not say whether the FBI had started to take an interest in Tamerlan although she also referred to the security services' interest in what Internet sites he visited.

U.S. government officials have said the brothers were not under surveillance as possible militants.

But the FBI said in a statement on Friday that in 2011 it interviewed Tamerlan at the request of a foreign government, which it did not identify.

It said the matter was closed because interviews with Tamerlan and family members "did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign".

The FBI statement was the first evidence that the family had come to security officials' attention after they emigrated to the United States from Dagestan about a decade ago.

North Korea Won't Give Up Nuclear Weapons, Pyongyang Says

SEOUL, April 20 (Reuters) - North Korea reiterated on Saturday that it would not give up its nuclear weapons, rejecting a U.S. condition for talks although it said it was willing to discuss disarmament.

North Korea, in a sign of a possible end to weeks of heightened hostility on the Korean peninsula, offered the United States and South Korea a list of conditions on Thursday for talks, including the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

But the United States said it was awaiting "clear signals" that North Korea would halt its nuclear weapons activities.

"The U.S. should not think about the denuclearisation on the peninsula before the world is denuclearised," the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in a commentary.

"There may be talks between the DPRK and the U.S. for disarmament but no talks on denuclearisation," it said. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

North Korea signed a denuclearisation-for-aid deal in 2005 but later backed out of that pact. It now says its nuclear arms are a "treasured sword" that it will never give up.

It conducted its third nuclear test in February.

The test triggered new U.N. sanctions which in turn led to a dramatic intensification of North Korea's threats of nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited China, South Korea and Japan this month for talks on North Korea and stressed his interest in a diplomatic solution to the tension on the peninsula.

He later told a U.S. Senate hearing that North Korea's list of conditions was "at least a beginning gambit", but added that it was "not acceptable, obviously, and we have to go further".

The Rodong Sinmun said U.S. talk of dialogue was "nothing but rhetoric".

North Korea has a long record of making threats to secure concessions from the United States and South Korea, only to repeat the process later. Both the United States and the South have said in recent days that the cycle must cease. (Reporting by Robert Birsel; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Shots Fired At Denver Civic Center Pot Rally 4/20 Celebration

DENVER — Gunfire erupted at a Denver pot celebration Saturday, injuring two people and scattering a crowd of thousands who had gathered for the first 4/20 counterculture holiday since the state legalized marijuana.
The man and woman who were shot were expected to survive, and police were looking for one or two suspects, said Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson. Police asked festival attendees for possible photo or video of the shootings, and had no immediate motive.
Witnesses described a scene in which a jovial atmosphere quickly turned to one of panic at the downtown Civic Center Park just before 5 p.m. Several thought firecrackers were being set off, then a man fell bleeding, his dog also shot.
"I saw him fall, grabbing his leg," said Travis Craig, 28, who was at the celebration, saw the shooting and said he used a belt to apply a tourniquet to the man's leg.

"He was just screaming that he was in pain, and wanted to know where his girlfriend was. She was OK. And then the cops showed up real quick, like, less than a minute. They put him on ambulance and left."
The annual pot celebration this year was expected to draw as many as 80,000 people after recent laws in Colorado and Washington made marijuana legal for recreational use.
A sizable police force on motorcycles and horses had been watching the celebration since its start earlier Saturday. But authorities, who generally look the other way at public pot smoking here on April 20, didn't arrest people for smoking in public, which is still illegal.
Police said earlier in the week that they were focused on crowd security in light of attacks that killed three at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.






"We're aware of the events in Boston," said Denver police spokesman Aaron Kafer, who declined to give specifics about security measures being taken. "Our message to the public is that, if you see something, say something."

Stephanie Riedel, who traveled to the pot celebration from Pittsburgh, said she was dancing with a hula hoop when she heard pops. A man ran past her, then she said the crowd started screaming and running away. She was about 20 feet from the shooting and heard four or five shots.

"I couldn't make sense of what it was at first," she said. "We were all having a good time and I was in the mindframe of, we're here at a peace gathering. I thought it some guys playing."
Rapper Lil' Flip was performing when the shootings occurred.
Aerial footage showed the massive crowd frantically running from the park.
Ian Bay, who was skateboarding through Civic Center Park when shots erupted, said he was listening to music on his headphones when he looked to his right and saw a swarm of hundreds of people running at him.
"I sort of panicked. I thought I was going through an anxiety thing because so many people were coming after me," he said.
Before the shooting, reggae music filled the air, and so did the smell of marijuana, as celebrants gathered by mid-morning in the park just beside the state Capitol.
Group smoke-outs were planned Saturday from New York to San Francisco. The origins of the number "420" as a code for pot are murky, but the drug's users have for decades marked the date 4/20 as a day to use pot together.

Colorado and Washington are still waiting for a federal response to the votes and are working on setting up commercial pot sales, which are still limited to people with certain medical conditions. In the meantime, pot users are free to share and use the drug in small amounts.
A citizen advocacy group that opposes marijuana proliferation, Smart Colorado, warned in a statement that public 4/20 celebrations "send a clear message to the rest of the nation and the world about what Colorado looks like."
"Does the behavior of the participants in these events reflect well on our state?" asked the head of Smart Colorado, Henny Lasley.
A smaller Sunday event scheduled at the park was canceled.
Saturday's attack recalled a similar shooting that left a police officer dead at a crowded jazz concert in Denver's City Park last summer.
The 22-year-old suspect in that case pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and faces at least 16 years in prison when he is sentenced at a hearing scheduled for June 21.
His attorneys said he was being pursued by gang members when he drew his weapon and fired.