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Flags to be lowered for Boston bombing
April 16, 2013
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Richard Martin was seven when he posed with a poster he drew last year. "No more hurting people," he wrote. "Peace." He died Monday of a bomb blast while waiting for his father to finish the Boston Marathon.
President Barack Obama has ordered all federal flags flown by the United States be lowered to half-staff or half-mast from sunup to sundown Saturday as a mark of respect for the victims of the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon, which claimed the lives of three and injured more than 140.

Among the dead was eight-year-old Richard Martin, who was waiting for his father to cross the finish line with his mother and sister, both of whom were grievously injured by the blast. caused by a bomb sealed inside a pressure cooker and packed with shrapnel.

In a proclamation signed today, the President wrote:

"As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on April 15, 2013, in Boston, Massachusetts, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, April 20, 2013. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

"IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh."
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