The area around the Boston Marathon finish line was evacuated last night and a man now identified as Kayvon Edson was arrested when police found two backpacks on the ground near the site of last year’s bombing, and this morning reporters are mining Edson’s extensive online presence for details. (It looks like authorities are referring to him as Kevin Edson, so that might be his legal name, but he seems to have called himself Kayvon.) From Joe Coscarelli at Daily Intelligencer:
“I’m a fashion designer, an entrepreneur, a performance artist, a mental patient, a blogger bloggerist, a jailbird, a college dropout, and a drag queen,” says Edson in an eponymous video posted on YouTube. “Boston yeaaaah, dude,” he bellows in character as a bro. He also says he was diagnosed as bipolar.
Edson seems to have posted pictures of accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on his Facebook page and blog yesterday before the incident. BuzzFeed also has details on Edson, including what might be phone-shot video of him walking near the finish line dressed in funeral attire and carrying a backpack.
UPDATE 5:35 p.m.: Kayvon/Kevin Edson’s family said in a statement that he suffers from mental health issues and that they are “sorry and emotionally overwhelmed” by what transpired last night.
