DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We are going to turn to the city of Boston now, where we have seen an astonishing turn of events, all overnight and all morning, in the Boston Marathon bombings investigation. One of the suspects in the bombings was killed after leading police on a wild chase. The other is the target of an intense manhunt that has shut down the city.
The authorities are telling residents of Boston and all the surrounding areas to stay in their homes. The manhunt, as we understand it, is focusing right now on different neighborhoods in the suburb of Watertown, Massachusetts. And we're joined now by Curt Nickisch, a reporter with member station with WBUR. And Curt, what's the latest?
CURT NICKISCH, BYLINE: Well, we're about to hear the latest, hopefully. State officials have begun setting up to have a press conference. We're hearing that the mayor may well be speaking. And I think the really interesting thing about this is that this whole area where the press conference is being held is lined with state troopers.
At first when they assembled behind the microphones where people would be speaking, they were facing forward, and I thought, oh, that's just a nice backdrop for the cameras. So it's not a show. It's a show of force, and it's a show of public safety, because they're basically protecting this area. They've also brought in bomb-sniffing dogs through to smell cameras and gear.
And the message from officials so far really has been to be safe, to stay inside and stay away from the doors and windows and only open it if a uniformed officer is there.
GREENE: And Curt, just clear this up for me if you can. This press conference, is it taking place close enough to where we think there's police activity that they would feel the need to kind of have police officers surrounding the area to protect people at this briefing?
NICKISCH: Absolutely. We're talking as little as three or four hundred yards from potentially areas that could be areas that they'd be looking at. But we are right at the - sort of at the edge of East Watertown, where this search is really centered.
GREENE: Well, hopefully we'll hear from Boston's Mayor Thomas Menino and other authorities soon to answer some of the remaining questions, which are numerous. It sounds like it has just been an unbelievably dramatic morning in Boston. I mean stepping back, just imagining a major American city in total lockdown mode, and we'll talk about that in a moment.
Right now we're going to turn to the press conference. We understand that we're about to hear from...
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
