Witness: MBTA Officer Hit by Friendly Fire During Watertown Shootout

A Watertown resident who witnessed the shootout between police officers and the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects in the East End said she believes the MBTA officer critically injured in the battle on April 19 was struck by friendly fire.

The Boston Globe reported Tuesday that a woman who lives just a few hundred feet from the scene of the chaotic gun battle saw officers firing at the bombing suspects and then saw someone at a nearby street corner fall.

She wrote in a statement to the Globe that Winchester native and MBTA Officer Richard Donohue Jr. was hit near the end of the shootout as 19-year-old suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove away from the area in a stolen SUV.

"It appeared to me that an individual at the corner [of the street] fell to the ground and had probably been hit in the gunfire," Dexter Avenue resident Jane Dyson wrote in a statement to the Globe. "I later learned that the individual who had been shot was Officer Richard Donohue."

She also wrote that the gunfire had been focused on the suspect. 

Dyson did not fault the police for Donohue's injuries.

“I don’t second-guess the actions the police took to stop these terrorists,” Dyson said in an interview with the Globe. “The police did a great job.” 

The shootout occurred at the intersection of Laurel Street and Dexter Avenue, and included around a dozen officers from four police agencies. 

Donohue was taken to Mount Auburn Hospital and had almost no blood when he arrived. Watertown Firefigthers helped save him at the scene of the battle.

Last week, Donohue wrote a letter that he is "awake, moving around, talking, and telling jokes," in a letter that appeard on the Transit Police blog.

Read the entire Boston Globe article by clicking here.