Watertown Residents Relieved After Guilty Verdict In Tsarnaev Trial
WATERTOWN (CBS) - Bullet holes still dot Loretta Kehayias' Watertown home on Laurel Street. It's a reminder of the firefight with the Tsarnaev brothers nearly two years ago when some 200 bullets were exchanged with police and homemade bombs were hurled.
"Things were going off. One bomb that he threw lit up this entire house. I didn't think we were going to make it," said Kehayias.
Now guilty verdicts bring her relief and she hopes the sentencing phase of the trial brings the death penalty. "He had an agenda and he followed it," she says. "I don't believe his brother was the sole person in this, they're both terrorists."
Read: Verdict Count By Count
The neighborhood was part of the aftermath of the marathon carnage as Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were hunted down by authorities. Resident Terry Phipps remembers being terrified that night, and now hopes for the death penalty as well. "What he did was so bad, just bad that it's the way it needs to be," said Phipps.
Former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis says there was satisfaction then in how quickly investigators put the case together. And though he says he's not a big proponent of the death penalty, he believes it's appropriate in this case. "Because of the extreme atrocity and cruelty of the attack. The fact that he targeted innocent women and children and he's an avowed terrorist," said Davis.
Loretta Kehayias says she can't forget the image of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev leaving the bomb behind eight year old Martin Richard. "His family sitting in the courtroom, I saw that picture on television and I broke down and cried for that little boy. It's just awful."