The Boston Marathon bombing suspect was captured alive Friday after a standoff in boat in a Watertown backyard, police said.
Police converged on a home at 67 Franklin Street and surrounded a boat in the driveway where 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding.
This came after a tip from a resident that she had seen blood on the boat and in the grass and noticed a ladder.
Earlier, officials revealed that Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan, exchanged 200 rounds with police during a stunning firefight early in the morning and left seven homemade explosives behind.
More than half a day after the bloody rampage ended in the death of Tamerlan, the city and surrounding suburbs were on high alert as police searched for Dzhokhar.
Anxiety was rising as SWAT teams and troops hunted door to door for the fugitive—and for more bombs. Friday night’s scheduled Red Sox and Bruins games and Big Apple Circus performance were canceled. Amtrak service between Boston and New York was suspended. A temporary lockdown was lifted but residents were encouraged to remain vigilent.
Dzhokhar, 19, remained on the lam hours after he and brother, Tamerlan, 26, made a desperate effort to flee the city following the FBI’s release of their photos Thursday evening.
They killed a campus security officer, carjacked a man, and led police on a wild chase that ended in a firefight in which more than 200 rounds were exchanged, police said. The older brother, who had a bomb strapped to his body, was killed but the younger one escaped, though he may have been wounded, law enforcement sources said.
During the first Watertown gun battle between police and the two brothers, which occurred Friday morning, about 200 rounds were exchanged.
During the course of the day, seven improvised explosive devices were recovered, some in Watertown some at the brothers’ house in Cambridge, police said.
Authorities had said they were also looking for a possible associate, but NBC News learned later that the only subject of the search was the younger Tsarnaev. Adding to the nightmare, an explosive was found in Boston Friday morning and disabled, and police feared there could be more explosives, an official said.
President Barack Obama was briefed by his top security and counter-terrorism advisers on developments for about an hour in the White House Situation Room
An irate uncle urged Tsarnaev to “turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims!”
Tamerlan’s in-laws issued a statement late Friday: “Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred. In the aftermath of the Patriot’s Day horror, we know that we never knew Tamarlane Tsarnaev. Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted. Please respect our family’s privacy in this difficult time.”
During a desperate effort to flee after their photos were released by the FBI, the brothers carjacked a Mercedes SUV and told the driver they were the men behind Monday’s double-blast attack at the race and had just killed a campus security officer, a source told NBC News. The driver was released unhurt.
Tamerlan flew in and out of Kennedy International last year and was out of the country for six months. Investigators said they want to know if he received any terror training while he was overseas.
Travel records obtained by NBC New York show he left New York on Jan. 12, 2012, for Russia. He stayed overseas and returned to JFK on July 17, 2012. The travel documents show a photo of a bearded Tamerlan. The documents show there is no record of Dzhokhar leaving the United States.
Three dozen FBI agents were surrounding the Cambridge, Mass., home where the brothers, of Chechen descent, grew up after moving to the U.S. a decade ago.
Chechnya is a largely Muslim area of the Caucasus region that had engaged in a bloody war and spectacular terrorist assaults while trying to break away from Russia.
The militant group responsible for the Chechen insurgency cast doubt on allegations that the brothers had carried out the marathon attacks. The official media arm of the Chechen mujahedeen, the Kavkaz Center, published a blog post that suggested the investigation into Monday’s deadly attack is part of an anti-Chechnya “PR campaign.”
In an emotional statement, their uncle Ruslan Tsarni called his nephews “losers,” telling reporters: “They put a shame on our family. … They put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity.”
“Turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness from the victims!,” Tsarni said outside his Maryland home.
An aunt, Maret Tsnaraeva, told reporters in Toronto that about two years ago the older brother became a devout Muslim who prayed five times a day, and she didn’t believe the brothers could have been involved in Monday’s attack, according to The Associated Press.
Tamerlan had married and had a 3-year-old daughter, Tsnaraeva said. “He has a wife in Boston and from a Christian family, so you can’t tie it to religion,” she said. “At that age all they want is love, so he found his love, he married, he had a daughter, and he was very happy about his daughter.”
In Russia, the suspected bombers’ father, Anzor, told The Associated Press his sons “were set up.”
He called Dzhokhar “a true angel” and described him as a medical student who was expected to visit for the holidays.
In an interview with the pro-Kremlin paper Izvestia, the father said he last spoke with Tamerlan right after the marathon attack.
“When I heard the terrible news, I called my older son’s phone and asked, ‘Were you there? Are you OK?’ And he said: ‘Dad, don’t worry, we did not go there. Everybody is alive and well.'”
Authorities painted a starkly different picture of the surviving son.
“We believe this man to be a terrorist,” Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said. “We believe this to be a man who’s come here to kill people.”
“There is a massive manhunt underway,” Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick said.
Earlier, officials had urged citizens to stay indoors while the manhunt was underway. The lockdown initially affected more than 300,000 people in Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, Brighton, Allston and Belmont, but by 8 a.m., the entire city of Boston was paralyzed, officials said.
Two unidentified people were taken into custody at the Cambridge home where Tsarnaev brothers grew up, but they were not being described as additional suspects. Dozens of law enforcers ringed the house.
Police discovered an improvised explosive device in Boston at Charles Gate and rendered it safe, a senior Boston police official said. Following that the, city was locked down and the MBTA transit service was completely shut down.
Authorities fear additional devices may have been planted. It is clear, they said, that these men wanted to cause the maximum damage they could.
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