Father’s heartache for family caught in bombings

Martin Richard was one of three people killed in Monday’s blasts as he watched the race with his family. The explosions reportedly blew off one of his five-year-old sister Jane’s legs and left his mother Denise, 43, with serious brain injuries.

In a statement, Martin’s father Bill said: “My dear son Martin has died from injuries sustained in the attack on Boston. My wife and daughter are both recovering from serious injuries.

“We thank our family and friends, those we know and those we have never met, for their thoughts and prayers. I ask that you continue to pray for my family as we remember Martin.”

Mr Richard, a runner and cycling enthusiast who did not run the race as previously reported, had to have several ball bearings removed from his leg, congressman Stephen Lynch, a family friend, said.

The family were trying to escape over the race barriers and into the street after the first blast when the second bomb struck.

A photograph has emerged of Martin, from the Dorchester area of the Massachusetts city, holding a poster he drew in an art class last year, with the message: “No more hurting people.”

Neighbour Judy Tuttle said: “To know him was to love him. He had that million-dollar smile.”

The father of the second confirmed victim of the attacks has also spoken of his grief at the loss of his daughter.

Krystle Campbell, 29, from Arlington, Massachusetts, was watching her boyfriend run the marathon when she was killed.

Miss Campbell’s father William described his daughter, who worked for a restaurant consultancy firm, as a “wonderful, wonderful girl”.

“She helped everybody and I’m just so shocked right now. We’re just devastated,” he said.

“She was a wonderful, wonderful girl. Always willing to lend a hand.”

The Chinese consulate in New York said yesterday that the third victim was one of its citizens, a Boston University graduate student named by Chinese media as Lu Lingzi.

President Barack Obama, who has condemned the attacks as “heinous and cowardly”, is due to arrive in Boston today to speak at a service dedicated to the three killed and more than 170 injured in the blasts.

A nine-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy were among 17 victims said to remain in critical conditions last night.

The devices that caused the devastating shrapnel injuries, which have led to multiple amputations, were revealed to have been made from ordinary 1.6-gallon pressure cookers packed with explosives.

One was filled with nails while the other contained shards of metal and ball bearings. Both were stuffed into black duffel bags and left on the ground.

Last night there had still been no claims of responsibility for the attack.

Mr Obama said it was being treated as an act of terrorism but admitted officials do not know “whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organisation, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual”.

Pressure-cooker explosives have been used in Afghanistan, India, Nepal and Pakistan, according to a July 2010 intelligence report by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department.

One of the three devices used in the May 2010 Times Square attempted bombing was a pressure cooker, the report said. The Pakistani Taliban, which claimed responsibility for that attempt, has denied any part in the Boston Marathon attack.

Meanwhile, a suspicious substance in a letter addressed to the president tested positive for the lethal poison ricin. The letter was intercepted by the US Secret Service on Tuesday, the day after another containing the same substance was sent to a Republican senator Roger Wicker.