The suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing had originally planned to strike on July 4 but chose the race because it coincided with the time they had finished assembling the explosives, a law-enforcement official said Thursday.
According to hospital interviews with surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shortly after he was captured, the suspects apparently finished constructing the explosives well before they had originally planned and chose to act sooner rather than wait, said the official, who is not authorized to comment publicly.
It was not immediately clear, however, whether the suspects had identified a specific July 4 target that corresponded with a later completion time, the official said. But the suspects allegedly settled on the marathon after noticing preparations for the race shortly before the event.
Boston hosts one of the premiere July 4 celebrations in the U.S., featuring the Boston Pops and a spectacular fireworks display on the banks of the Charles River.
Tsarnaev has been charged with detonating one of the pressure-cooker devices, while brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a confrontation with police in the days after the attacks.
Meanwhile, investigators in the Boston bombing case want to find out what Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife discussed when he phoned her a few hours after the FBI released photos of him and his brother as suspects in the deadly attack, a separate law-enforcement official said Thursday.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died not long after the conversation during a shootout with police that left his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, seriously injured.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured a few hours later while hiding in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Mass. He is currently being held at a prison medical center.
That same evening, police say, three classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth allegedly concluded that he was one of the suspects, went to his dorm room and removed his backpack and laptop. A federal complaint charges that they took the items to try to keep Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from getting into trouble because of the bombings.
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