WATERTOWN, Mass. — The second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday night, bringing to an end a massive manhunt in the tense Massachusetts capital worried by warnings the man was possibly armed with explosives.
After announcing the arrest on Twitter, Boston police tweeted: “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”
“We’re so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case,” Massachusetts State Police spokesman Col. Timothy Alben said at a news conference about the capture of the second suspect in the Boston bombings. “We’re exhausted, folks, but we have a victory here tonight.”
Authorities confirmed the man in custody is 19-year-old Dzhokar Tsarnaev, who escaped an overnight shootout with police that left his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev — the other man wanted in the bombings — dead.
The younger Tsarnaev was in serious condition at an area hospital, police said.
Tsarnaev was cornered late Friday as he was hiding on a boat in a backyard of Watertown, a suburb of Boston.
Police were alerted to his whereabouts by a man who went outside after authorities lifted an order for residents to stay inside during the manhunt. The man saw blood on a boat in the backyard. He then lifted up the tarp covering the boat and “saw a man covered with blood.”
It was that call that resulted in an arrest less than a week after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, shocking the nation and leaving a city on edge.
“There was an exchange of gunfire, and I don’t know if he was struck.”
Using a bullhorn authorities called on the suspect to surrender: “Come out with your hands up.
Tsarnaev, according to authorities, refused to surrender.
“We used a robot to pull the tarp off the boat,” David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police said. “We were also watching him with a thermal imaging camera in our helicopter. He was weakened by blood loss — injured last night most likely,”
Tsarnaev was taken into custody after authorities rushed the boat.
Law enforcement officials erupted in cheers in Watertown, Masssachusetts, on Friday night — moments before Boston police tweeted that the lone remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was in custody.
After the ebullient shouts, police began heading away from the backyard of a Watertown home where the suspect, Tsarnaev, was believed to have been holding up in a boat.
Soon thereafter, an official in a law enforcement vehicle with tinted windows was asked by someone, “Is that him?” The person inside the vehicle responded, “Yes” — precipitating more cheers among the residents gathered nearby.
Mary Sullivan was walking her black Labrador earlier Friday night when gunshots rang out in her neighborhood.
“I’m glad it’s over,” she said. “The city and the people have gone through so much pain over these irrational decisions of these young men.”
“We’ve closed an important chapter in this tragedy,” President Barack Obama. Even so, he vowed to seek answers to the motive in the attack and find out whether the suspects received any help to carry out their plot.
