Police took a 20-year-old Saudi national into custody near the scene of yesterday’s horrific Boston Marathon bomb attack, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

The potential suspect was questioned by the FBI and local police yesterday at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was under heavy guard while being treated for shrapnel injuries to his leg sustained in the blast.

In late afternoon, a large group of federal and state law enforcement agents raided an apartment in a building in the Saudi man’s hometown of Revere, Mass.

FBI agents could be seen through one window. It was not clear what, if anything, they found. But Revere fire officials said they were called out to support bomb-squad officers as part of an investigation of a “person of interest” in the marathon attack.

At the hospital, investigators seized the man’s clothes to examine whether they held any evidence that he was behind the attack. The law-enforcement sources also told The Post that the man was not free to leave the medical center.

He had suffered shrapnel wounds to the back of a leg but was not likely to die, a source said.

As of last night, investigators had not yet directly asked the man whether he had set off the bombs. But they had asked him general questions, such as what he was doing in the area.

The potential suspect told police he had dinner Sunday night near Boston’s Prudential Center, about half a mile from the blast site, the sources said.

He also said that he went to the Copley Square area yesterday to witness the finish of the race.

The sources said that, after the man was grabbed by police, he smelled of gunpowder and declared, “I thought there would be a second bomb.”

He also asked: “Did anyone die?”

Officials showed up at the Revere apartment at about 5:30 p.m. in unmarked vehicles, a resident of the building said. It’s on a street where the man had lived, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

About an hour later, more vehicles, carrying agents of the FBI, Homeland Security and ATF also descended on the site, along with firefighters and a bomb squad. They searched an apartment on the fifth floor.

By midnight, most of the authorities had left the complex, which sits on a piece of ocean-front property in the seaside city.

Investigators were looking for anything that might have been used set to off the devices, including a remote control.

According to a report by CBS News, the man was initially tackled by a bystander while running from the scene of the explosions.

The bystander told police he grabbed the Saudi because he thought he was acting suspiciously.

Additional reporting by



Kate Kowsh in Revere, Mass.