The man believed to be responsible for placing the bombs that struck near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing 3 and injuring more than 170, was pulled this afternoon from his hiding place in a boat parked in the backyard of a home.
Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev
, 19, of Cambridge was apprehended shortly before 8:45 p.m. at a home on Franklin Street in this community just outside Boston.
“We are eternally grateful for the outcome here tonight. We have a suspect in custody,” said Colonel Timothy Alben, commander of the State Police.
“It’s a night where I think we’re all going to rest easy,” Governor Deval Patrick said at a news conference in Watertown.“It’s a night where I think we’re all going to rest easy,” Governor Deval Patrick said at a news conference in Watertown.
Tsarnaev was rushed to a local hospital. Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said he was in serious condition.
Police had approached him cautiously, worried that he might be wearing a suicide bomb vest.
“We got him,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino tweeted immediately afterwards. He took to the police radio to thank officers personally, telling them, “Good job, guys!”
The apprehension of Tsarnaev was the latest stunning development in a day that had shocked the city, even as it was reeling from Monday’s attack.
The other suspect in the bombings, Tsarnaev’s brother, was killed early this morning in a gun battle with police. An MIT police officer was also killed Thursday night and an MBTA Transit Police officer suffered gunshots wounds. The two brothers threw pipe bombs at police who pursued them into Watertown, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was able to escape, officials said.
In yet another twist in the fast-breaking story, New Bedford police said this evening that three people had been taken into custody in their city as part of the bombing investigation.
New Bedford Police Lieutenant Robert Richard said his department assisted federal investigators in executing a search warrant at a home on Carriage Drive in New Bedford, about 10 minutes from the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a student.
Richard said the FBI took two men and a woman into custody. “They appeared to be either fellow college students or fellow residents,” he said.
Tsarnaev was discovered hiding in the boat at about 7 p.m., less than an hour after officials had held a news conference to say that he had eluded them, despite a daylong search of a 20-block area in Watertown by heavily armed police.
A State Police helicopter peeked down into the boat from above. Police used “flash bang” stun grenades to disorient and distract him, Davis said. An FBI hostage rescue team eventually pulled him out.
Davis said Tsarnaev was discovered by a resident who had come out of his house and noticed blood on the boat and that the tarp covering it had been ripped. The resident lifted the tarp and saw a bloody form inside. He said the resident had called police, and police had exchanged gunfire with Tsarnaev at the boat.
A Globe photographer at the scene could hear police saying after Tsarnaev had been surrounded, “We know you’re in there. Come out on your own terms. Come out with your hands up.”
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a native of Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz state news agency said.
The Associated Press reported this morning that the dead suspect’s name was Tsarnaev’s brother Tamerlan. A law enforcement source told the Globe that an explosive trigger was found on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body at the morgue.
The frenzy of activity in the case came a day after authorities had released the suspects’ pictures, calling them Suspect No. 1 and Suspect No. 2.
“We’re so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case,” said Alben.
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