Boston Marathon bombing suspect in custody

April 19, 2013

Scott Nunes,

Posted: April 19, 2013

WATERTOWN, Mass. (AP) – A 19-year-old college student wanted in the
Boston Marathon bombings was taken into custody Friday evening after a
manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and
accomplice dead.

Police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
was in custody. They later wrote, “CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The
search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in
custody.”

Tsarnaev's brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed Friday in a furious attempt to escape police.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had been holed up in a boat in a
Watertown neighborhood. The crowd gathered near the scene let out a
cheer when spectators saw officers clapping.

“Everyone wants him alive,” said Kathleen Paolillo, a 27-year-old teacher who lives in Watertown.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted “We got him,” along
with a photo of the police commissioner speaking to him. Watertown
residents poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer
police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

During a long night of violence Thursday into
Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded
another lawman and hurled explosives at police in a car chase and gun
battle, authorities said.

The suspects were identified by law enforcement
officials and family members as Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, ethnic
Chechen brothers who had lived in Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in
southern Russia. They had been in the U.S. for about a decade, an uncle
said, and were believed to be living in Cambridge, Mass.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old who had been known
to the FBI as Suspect No. 1 and was seen in surveillance footage of the
marathon in a black baseball cap, was killed overnight, officials said.
His younger brother, who had been dubbed Suspect No. 2 and was seen
wearing a white, backward baseball cap in the images from Monday's
deadly bombing – escaped and was on the run.

Their uncle in Maryland, Ruslan Tsarni, pleaded on
live television: “Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask
for forgiveness.”

Authorities in Boston suspended all mass transit
and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its
suburbs to stay indoors as the hunt for Suspect No. 2 went on.
Businesses were asked not to open. People waiting at bus and subway
stops were told to go home. The Red Sox and Bruins postponed their
games.

From Watertown to Cambridge, police SWAT teams,
sharpshooters and FBI agents surrounded various buildings as police
helicopters buzzed overhead and armored vehicles rumbled through the
streets. Authorities also searched trains.

“We believe this man to be a terrorist,” said
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. “We believe this to be a man who's
come here to kill people.”

The bombings on Monday killed three people and
wounded more than 180 others, tearing off limbs in a spray of shrapnel
and instantly raising the specter of another terrorist attack on U.S.
soil.

Chechnya was the scene of two wars between Russian
forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were
killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that
has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not
in the West.

Investigators in the Boston case have shed no light
on the motive for the bombing and have said it is unclear whether it
was the work of domestic or international terrorists or someone else
entirely with an unknown agenda.

The endgame – at least for Suspect No. 1 – came
just hours after the FBI released photos and video of the two young men
at the marathon's finish line and appealed to the public for help in
identifying and capturing them.

State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said police
realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the
two men told a carjacking victim during their getaway attempt overnight.

___

Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun
and Jack Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike
Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston and Jeff
Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.

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