Watertown is the next town over, and just up the road from where they filled up with fuel after carjacking... so, yeah, looks like it might be very related.
I heard the carjacking reported on scanner while the MIT standoff was still going on, and there was a pretty short time between police at the MIT incident switching channels and some frantic-sounding talk from police following up on LoJack's report that the stolen car was in Watertown. So I'm inclined to believe these are two separate things.
The carjacking victim reported that they'd been driving around for about half an hour before he escaped at a gas station. Time's arrow beats proximity.
I see the place where the carjacker escaped, an area I know pretty well. They must have been driving around in circles for a long time. There's no way it takes 30 minutes to get that far at night in Cambridge.
Watertown is 10-15 minutes away from MIT. It seems likely that they were connected, given that there was a carjacking ~2 minutes away from MIT in Cambridge.
Note: the carjacking happened in the same direction from MIT as Watertown.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...