Boston Shut Down: Entire City in Lock Down As Manhunt Continues

Impact

The shutdown of Boston and neighboring Watertown in an effort to capture the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing is an unprecedented move by law enforcement agencies. All roads in and out of the city are blocked, mass transit has been shut down, schools and businesses are closed and residents have been asked to shelter in place. A no-fly zone is also in place. 

According to CNN, 9,000 members of law enforcement have descended on the city, searching every possible hiding place for bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They include heavily armed members of the military and police in tactical gear. 

Police also advised residents in neighboring Waltham, Belmont, Newton, and Cambridge to remain indoors and for businesses to remain closed until the suspect is apprehended.

Several area universities are also closed for the day, including the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the suspect is said to have been enrolled, and MIT, where the campus police officer was fatally shot. The other closed universities include Boston University, Harvard, Boston College, Berklee, Emerson College, UMass Boston and Wentworth Institute of Technology.

This photo, from a Tweet by MSNBC, shows the empty streets of Boston at 10 AM – which should have been a bustling time for the downtown area.

Residents of Watertown, who were awoken by startling police presence in the middle of the night, found this notice on their door left by police:

Some residents took to Twitter to post images the heavy police presence on their previously quiet suburban streets:

These tweets quickly ground to a halt after the Boston PD posted this tweet just before 9 a.m.

It's unclear how much longer the shutdown will last. Cab service was restored in Boston almost an hour ago, but it appears no other closures have been lifted.