News
Former OU Professor Awakened By Boston Shootout
By: Megan Moseley, Taylor Mirfendereski
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A former Ohio University professor says he was awakened by the sound of police sirens and gun shots that led to the death of an MIT police officer and one of the two Boston bombing suspects early Friday morning.
Casey Hayward lives on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown, Mass, just several blocks away from the scene of the shootout that killed Patrol Officer Sean A. Collier and the alleged Boston bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
"I heard a lot of cars driving really fast, sirens and there were cars tearing down the road in both directions of traffic," said Hayward. "Maybe two or three minutes later we just heard what must have been like 60 gun shots or something and something that sounded like an explosion."
As he looked outside his second floor window, he likened the scene to a war zone.
"We're used to sirens because we live by a fire station, but as soon as we heard the gunfire, that's when it got scary," he said. "I have never heard that much gunfire ever and I've worked on a project in Iraq where there were a lot of mortar scares. That was nothing compared to what it sounded like out there."
Hayward has described the day as "painfully slow," as thousands of officers with rifles and armored vehicles swarm the streets for clues that could lead to the capture of the remaining bombing suspect, Dzhokar Tsarnaev.
"They're just kind of crawling through these neighboorhoods," he said.
Boston and surrounding suburbs were at a virtual standstill for most of Friday and residents were asked to stay indoors.