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 Mayor Martin Walsh plans to mark the day with a low-key ceremony
at the site where twin pressure-cooker bombs went off on April 15,
2013, ripping through a crowd of some of the thousands of
spectators, volunteers and athletes at the Boston Marathon.
"April 15 is a day that has come to stand for our deepest values,"
Walsh said. "I hope everyone can mark this day in a way that is
appropriate and inclusive."
At 2:49 p.m. ET organizations around New England's largest city will
observe a moment of silence to mark the time the first bomb went
off.
The anniversary comes amid a break in the trial of Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev, who was convicted last week of carrying out the bombing
attack, before the same jury that found him guilty decides whether
to sentence him to death or life in prison without possibility of
parole.
Tsarnaev, 21, was the younger of two brothers who carried out the
attack and three days later shot dead a police officer as they
prepared to flee the city. His older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan,
died following a gunfight with police after that shooting.
Three people died in the bombing attack: 8-year-old Martin Richard;
Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 23; and restaurant manager
Krystle Campbell, 29. Massachusetts Institute of Technology police
officer Sean Collier, 26, was shot dead three days later.
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Collier's sister earlier this week said on social media that she did
not believe Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who left a note suggesting
the attack was an act of retribution for U.S. military campaigns in
Muslim-dominated countries, deserved to die.
"Whenever someone speaks out against the death penalty, they are
challenged to imagine how they would feel if someone they love were
killed. I’ve been given that horrible perspective," Collier's
sister, Jennifer Lemmerman, wrote on Facebook.
Other voices have been less forgiving, among them local CBS
commentator Jon Keller, who had first argued against pursuing the
death penalty, reasoning that allowing a guilty plea and life
sentence would spare the cost of a trial.
"I changed my mind, and in the wake of the verdict I'm not hearing
anything to change it again," Keller wrote earlier this month.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)
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