Police arrest second suspect in Boston bombings

WATERTOWN, Mass. — Boston Police confirmed Friday night that the second suspect in Monday’s Boston bombings was arrested after a tense standoff and a daylong manhunt that shut the metropolitan area down. Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, was taken to a nearby hospital in serious condition under armed guard.

“We got him,” Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted. A cheer erupted from a crowd gathered near the scene.

“CAPTURED!!!” police added later. “The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody.”

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Gunfire erupted Friday night amid the manhunt for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, and police in armored vehicles and tactical gear rushed into a Boston suburb in a possible break in the case.

The suspected bomber was cornered in a boat in a backyard in Watertown and arrested. Authorities received a tipoff from a Watertown resident who saw blood splattered on the boat in his backyard, peered into the boat, identified a bloodied figure and notified the police.

Police said three others were taken into custody for questioning at a housing complex where the younger Boston Marathon bombing suspect may have lived.

New Bedford Police Lt. Robert Richard said a private complex of off-campus housing at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth was searched by federal authorities Friday evening. Richard said the FBI took two males and one female into custody for questioning.

He said Tsarnaev may have lived at or was affiliated with the housing complex. He is registered at the school.

The burst of activity in Watertown came at the end of a tense day in and around Boston, and less than an hour after police announced that they were scaling back the hunt because they had come up empty-handed after an all-day search that sent thousands of SWAT team officers into the streets and paralyzed the metropolitan area.

The night before, two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing killed an MIT police officer, injured a transit officer in a firefight, and threw explosive devices at police during their getaway attempt in a long night of violence that left one of them dead and another still at large.

US President Barack Obama said shortly after the announcement of Tsarnaev’s arrest that the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing’s capture closes “an important chapter in this tragedy.”

Obama said the nation owes a debt of gratitude to law enforcement officials and the people of Boston for their help in the search for the men. He added that there are still many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others. He is urging the public to not rush to judgment about their motivations.

Earlier in the day, National Guard helicopters and bomb squads also landed near the scene of the standoff to help SWAT teams in their search for the suspect, who had been on the lam since early Friday morning’s shootout. Police were scouring the Watertown neighborhood, going door to door, and said they were constantly responding to new leads in their effort to find the suspect.

Authorities had interrogated the brothers’ uncle in Maryland — who called on his nephew to turn himself in. The suspect’s sister, who reportedly lives in the town of West New York in New Jersey, was also being questioned by investigators. Officials believe the suspect has a second sister in the US.

The brothers were identified to The Associated Press as coming from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars. 

Two students who were classmates of the younger Tsarnaev described him as a quiet, normal “good” kid to Fox News.

A man who was held up by the brothers early Friday morning told The Washington Post that the two men had bragged to him that they were the Boston Marathon bombers. Police believe the brothers held up the man either right before or right after killing the MIT officer, and that their stops at several ATMs with that man provided them with a critical piece of information in their pursuit.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police Friday morning, while Dzhokhar managed to escape during the intense firefight. Police said the two brothers threw I.E.D.’s at them, adding that security officials hadn’t called in professional units to dismantle what they believed were home-made explosive devices yet, because they were focusing on finding Tsarnaev first.

Police then said at a press conference that the I.E.D.’s would be exploded shortly. They have since brought in specialized units and performed a “controlled explosion” on the I.E.D.’s to ensure the safety of the officers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was said to have been the mastermind behind the operation. He had been an amateur boxer and was hopeful of making it to the Olympics.

National security officials in Washington, D.C. were coordinating with Boston police and FBI members to try to get a better picture of what drove the two suspects to carry out the bombing. US President Barack Obama was briefed for over an hour by the FBI and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Authorities claimed that the two men were Muslims who may have been exposed to homegrown radical influences. Officials in Boston and Washington, D.C. were trying to figure out if the brothers received support from overseas or from within the US.

Officials said they had pieced together a few more clues about the brothers, leading them to fear that the bombers didn’t act alone, and that they had quite likely received help or training from outside the US.

Steve Emerson, a national security expert, said that an analysis of the elder brother Tamerlan’s Facebook page as well as some of his social media posts indicated an affinity for al-Qaeda. One video he posted showed an al-Qaeda flag, and in another one, he mentioned his support for Hezb e-Tahrir, a radical group that believes in establishing an Islamic caliphate around the world.

The FBI revealed to CBS News overnight Friday that Tamerlan had been questioned by agents in 2011 about possible ties with extremists, at the request of an unnamed foreign government. Officials said he was released shortly after as no incriminating evidence was found.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Dzhokhar told friends he was upset when the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, two Muslim-majority countries.

Also, the brothers come from the North Caucasus region near Chechnya — a region considered part of the jihadi network, a former CIA operative explained on Fox News. “For example, Saudi Arabia has pumped a lot of money into training camps there,” the analyst said. He noted that Tamerlan’s travel records revealed that he had recently spent six months in Russia, intimating that he could have frequented one of the breakaway Muslim republics for jihadi training.

The elder Tsarnaev was believed to have become an increasingly devout Muslim. He reportedly prayed five times a day, and possibly drew his younger brother, Dzhokhar, into the orbit of radical Islamic groups.

Two law enforcement officials told the AP that the Tsarnaevs had been living legally in the US for at least one year. They had immigrated to the US under an American asylum program.