Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Boston Marathon: Analysis of the Second Bomb Crime Scene

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's bag was not the second bomb






This diagram depicts the Forum crime scene in the first seconds after the explosion's dust had settled. The ovals represent the locations of heavily injured persons sitting or lying on the ground.

According to several eyewitness accounts, some people were blown inside the restaurant by the blast. They are represented by the yellow ovals. The number (four) is an estimation and may be too high or too low. 

The green ovals represent injured persons on the sidewalk who are not visible or identifiable on the available photos, because they are covered by people standing around them. Again, the number may be a bit too high or too low, but this doesn't matter in order to achieve a good overview.

The red ovals represent injured persons who are individually identifiable on at least two of the following photos.

A - black shirt, male/female   photos 1, 2, 3, 4
B - white shirt, male   photos 1, 2, 5
C - green(?) shirt, light-colored trouses, male  photos 1, 2, 4
D - lying on the ground, heavily injured, male    photos 1, 4
E - long curly blond hair, female   photos 1, 3, 4

Photos 1 and 2 are the same shot; in photo 2, certain parts are blurred out, allegedly due to graphic. I posted it nevertheless, because the unredacted parts have a better quality than photo 1.

Photos 3 and 4 are different shots, taken only 1 or 2 seconds after another from different points.

Photo 5 is taken out of a video clip. Victim B is seen sitting on the sidewalk on the right side.

1




2




3




4

 




5






Most if not all of the injured people were displaced by the explosion. The epicenter of the bomb itself must have been emptied due to the enormous force of the blast. There is only one place which is 1) empty within a certain radius and 2) situated in the center of all injured persons. This is the entry area of the Forum's patio: 





Now the prosecution claims that Tsarnaev put his bag at the metal barriers (one metal barrier was blown across the street, as you can see on picture 1). The next diagram illustrates the hypothesis that his bag was the Forum bomb:




The diagram looks utterly unrealistic; this "bomb" didn't blow away the people next to it, yet it was somehow able to blow people from the patio inside the restaurant. Even a layman can see that this is not in accordance with elementary physics. It is also not in accordance with the available eyewitness reports (some of them I've featured in former blog entries).

The witnesses and pictures speak a plain language: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's bag was not the second bomb.