With the following tweet, the manhunt ended for the accused Boston Marathon bomber who was identified Thursday by the FBI as “Suspect Number Two.” The man now in custody is 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Boston can take a breath:
Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.
— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 20, 2013
Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, are believed to have carried out Monday’s attack at the Boston Marathon, which killed three people and injured 176. The two brothers, who immigrated with their family from the war-torn Russian province of Chechnya about 10 years ago, are also suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer in his vehicle. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed early Friday while trying to elude police.
The Associated Press reports that the younger Tsarnaev brother Dzhokhar had been holed up in a boat in a Watertown neighborhood. The end-game of the manhunt that riveted national attention started about 7 p.m. Eastern time, with reports of gunfire in Watertown, Massachusetts, a suburban community near Boston where the search had been underway for Tsarnaev. Authorities had told residents of the area to stay indoors.
Police cars and armored vehicles surrounded a house at 67 Franklin Street Friday night, shortly after police said at a press conference that the suspect fled on foot, was still at large and was considered armed and dangerous.
After the overnight shootout that left the older brother dead, an intense manhunt ensued, with a door-to-door search by heavily-armed police. Black Hawk helicopters buzzed overhead as SWAT teams combed through Watertown. Late Friday, after a tip from a resident who spotted what was apparently the suspect’s blood, authorities finally homed in on a tarp-covered boat parked on a trailer in the backyard of a three-story house. Tsarnaev lay hidden inside the boat.
The suspect was reportedly bleeding, seriously injured and was hiding in the stern of the boat, said David Procopio, spokesman for the Massachusetts State Police. After an exchange of gunfire, an FBI hostage negotiation unit was brought in and Tsarnaev was taken into custody after about an hour-long standoff. He was taken by ambulance for treatment at a Massachusetts hospital, according to state police, who described the suspect’s condition as “serious.”
Social media aggregator Twitchy.com collected tweets about the reactions to the end of the standoff, including the applause that broke out as Tsarnaev surrendered to authorities.
