America
Policeman honoured for hunting Boston Marathon bombers shot in face
Washington, March 29
A policeman honoured for
helping pursue the terrorists who attacked runners and spectators at the
2013 Boston Marathon has been shot in the face and is in an induced
coma, authorities said.
Officer John Moynihan, 34, was wounded in
Boston on Friday night during a routine traffic stop, Efe news agency
cited police Commissioner William Evans as telling a press conference.
After being stopped, the car's driver opened fire on Moynihan and other agents at the scene, until he was gunned down by police.
In
the shooting, Moynihan took a bullet below his right eye, a woman who
was passing by was shot in the arm, and three other cops required
medical care for problems of stress.
"The officer here is in
tough shape, but we're all pulling for him, and hopefully he'll pull
through. His family's with him, the clergy has been here and... let's
pray for him," Evans said.
On his part, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh
condemned the attack and said "these acts of violence have no place in
our neighbourhoods".
Moynihan, a war veteran who served in Iraq,
was decorated last May in the White House for his role in hunting down
the brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, perpetrators of the Boston
Marathon bombing in April 2013.
The brothers planted two homemade bombs that killed three people and wounded 260 at the finish line of the race.
In
their attempted escape through Boston and its outskirts, the
perpetrators of the attack killed a policeman on the campus of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after which the movie-like
chase began with a driver being kidnapped, homemade explosive devices
tossed and shootouts in residential areas.
While Tamerlan was
killed in a clash with the cops, police managed to corner Dzhokhar in a
boat behind a house in Watertown after an almost 24-hour hunt.
The trial charging Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his late brother with planting the two bombs began on March 3.