Manhunt spread into Connecticut Brother killed in shootout

Police in East Norwalk prepare to search an Amtrak train for suspects in the boston marathon explosion. Police in East Norwalk prepare to search an Amtrak train for suspects in the boston marathon explosion. Photo: Contributed Photo: Contributed Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close Manhunt spread into Connecticut 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

Staff and wire reports

WATERTOWN, Mass. -- A 19-year-old Massachusetts college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombing was captured hiding in a boat parked in a backyard Friday night and his older brother lay dead in a furious 24-hour drama that transfixed the nation and paralyzed the Boston area.

"CAPTURED!!!" the Boston police tweeted in news that set off celebrations across the metropolitan area and finally broke the tension. "The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."

The bloody endgame came four days after the bombing and just a day after the FBI released surveillance-camera images of two young men suspected of planting the pressure-cooker explosives that ripped through the crowd at the marathon finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

The two men were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, Mass. But investigators gave no details on the motive for the bombing.

President Barack Obama declared Friday night that the capture "closed an important chapter in this tragedy." But he acknowledged that many unanswered questions remain about the motivations of the two men accused of perpetrating the attacks that unnerved the nation.

"The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers," said Obama, who branded the suspects "terrorists."

Early Friday morning, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a ferocious gun battle and car chase during which he and his younger brother hurled explosives at police from a stolen car, authorities said. The younger brother managed to escape.

During the getaway attempt, the brothers killed an MIT policeman and severely wounded another officer, authorities said.

After a tense, all-day manhunt and house-to-house search by thousands of SWAT team officers with rifles and armored vehicles, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was cornered in a homeowner's yard, where he exchanged gunfire with police while holed up in a boat, authorities said.

He was seized about 9 p.m. and hospitalized in serious condition with unspecified injuries, police said.

A cheer went up from a crowd of bystanders in Watertown.

"Everyone wants him alive," said Kathleen Paolillo, a teacher.

"Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job," said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.

Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.

Up until the younger man's capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across Boston and some of its suburbs because they had come up empty-handed.

But then a break came in a Watertown neighborhood when a homeowner saw blood on his boat, pulled back the tarp and saw the bloody suspect hiding inside, police said.

The FBI was swamped with tips after the release of the surveillance-camera photos -- 300,000 per minute -- but what role those played in the capture was unclear. 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 long night of crime.

The search for the younger brother all but paralyzed the Boston area. Officials shut down all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open, and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to stay inside and unlock their doors only for uniformed police.

"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."

Around midday, the suspects' uncle Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: "Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness."

Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 -- the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures -- was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.

Exactly when the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.

They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev somehow slipped away. He ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died at a Boston hospital after suffering what doctors said were multiple gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury.

Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded "like it was right next to my head ... and shook the whole house."

She said she was looking at the front door when a bullet came through the side paneling. SWAT team officers were running all over her yard, she said.

"It was very scary," she said. "There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another."

Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.

The men's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is "a true angel." He said his son was studying medicine.

"He is such an intelligent boy," the father said. "We expected him to come on holidays here."

The manhunt briefly stretched into Connecticut on Friday, where State Police troopers manned border patrols near the Massachusetts line and Norwalk police officers swarmed an Amtrak train after receiving a tip from Boston police that a suspect or someone associated with the bombings could be on board.

Norwalk police received a call from Boston authorities that the suspect -- or an accomplice or associate of the suspect -- was believed to have been on board a 5:10 a.m. Amtrak train from South Station.

Police from Norwalk's specially trained Emergency Services Unit boarded Amtrak's Acela train #2151 from 8:22 a.m. until 9:16 a.m., searching though its 93 passengers with bomb-sniffing dogs, Norwalk police Chief Thomas Kulhawik said

"That train was thoroughly searched with MTA bomb-sniffing dogs also for suspects and nothing turned up," Kulhawik said. "It looks like it was a false alarm."

A second train was also stopped and searched in Darien, Kulhawik said.

At the Stamford train station, Amtrak customers waited as trains were delayed due to police searches. At 12:30 p.m., the railroad announced that all service between New York and Boston was being indefinitely suspended.

Kathy Waldman, of Westport, was waiting for a late Amtrak Acela to Washington, D.C., two hours after waiting for a Metro-North train that didn't come. Ultimately her husband drove her to Stamford to catch the Amtrak train. She said she didn't mind the delays if they were related to apprehending the bombing suspect.

"I'm glad they are doing whatever they need to do," Waldman said.

Metro-North's New Haven line was shut down in both directions from 8:36 a.m. to 9:16 a.m., according to the MTA.