Manhunt for Boston bombers homes in on Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — It's a waiting game on Cambridge Street.

The mood is one of calm expectation. People are drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, checking their phones, walking their dogs and waiting to see what happens next.

The stretch of Cambridge St. in Inman Square, between East Cambridge and Central Sq. in Cambridge, Mass., is where the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects are said to have been living.

Earlier today, police secured a house on nearby Norfolk St., where suspects Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother Tamerlan, 26, are thought to have been staying. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout overnight in Watertown, Mass., while Dzhokhar is still at large.

Police announced they will be conducting a controlled explosion at the house on Norfolk St. later this afternoon.

For now, Cambridge St. is closed off and no traffic is coming through. There is a strong police presence, with more officers arriving all the time.

Among the people gathered along Cambridge St., are those that knew at least one of the suspects.

Twenty-year-old Torrie Martinez, former student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, said he first met bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, when they joined the wrestling team together.

“We joined up together," said Martinez, speaking on Cambridge St., half a block from the suspects' alleged house. "We took the same bus nearly every day.”

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Martinez remembers Dzhokhar as a "nice guy to talk to."

“When he wrestled he was pretty good. He made all states,” Martinez said. “You are going to hear it from me, you are going to hear it from everybody else — yeah, he was a nice kid."

Martinez said their conversations never got too personal.

“I didn’t get too involved in his personal life," he said. "Whenever we talked it was only ever small talk, usually wrestling.”

In fact, it seems Martinez didn't even know Dzhokhar's legal name.

“I didn’t realize it was him until I was looking at my Facebook because I was unaware of his legal name. We always just called him Jahar,” Martinez said.

Another bystander in Cambridge, 30-year-old Edmund Price, is a cancer researcher, who lives on Webster St., a block from Norfolk St.

“I was up all night watching news with all the stuff that went down. The cop that got shot was right outside where I work,” he said. "I didn't sleep much."

Price said he saw police activity right down the street at around 7:30 a.m.

“I came down here and I was surprised because there weren’t that many people, but things quickly expanded,” Price said.

“I went to get coffee and when I came back they had pushed everybody back. I was walking against a sea of people and thought, this wasn’t good. So now I’m just waiting here to see what happens.”