Law Enforcement Finally Tracks Down, Captures Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect

Updated at 12:41 a.m., April 20, 2013

WATERTOWN, Mass. (CBSNewYork/AP) -- Following an intense manhunt that caused chaos in Massachusetts and riveted the rest of the nation, law enforcement finally captured the second Boston Marathon bombing suspect on Friday night.

Following a short standoff in the backyard of a residence in a Watertown neighborhood, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody and arrested by Boston Police.

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Mayor Thomas Menino tweeted "We got him" just before 9 p.m. on Friday.

Boston Police tweeted: "CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."

Authorities said at a news conference Friday night that a Boston Police helicopter had detected the man in the boat using thermal imaging.

"Our helicopter had actually detected the subject in the boat. We have a FLIR (forward looking infrared device) on that helicopter. It picked up the heat signal of that individual," Massachusetts State Police Col. Timothy Alben said.

CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reported Tsarnaev was found bleeding and hiding in a boat in the backyard of the residence at 67 Franklin St. The homeowner noticed a tear in the boat's tarp and later a lot of blood and called 911, saying there was "a bloody mess" in his boat. Three officers arrived on the scene and investigated the boat, discovering the suspect. A short gun fight ensued.

Members of law enforcement then pulled back and waited out the suspect for approximately 90 minutes before using flash-bang grenades to startle Tsarnaev before moving in and making the arrest, Miller reported.

A police spokesman told CBS News' Don Dahler that Tsarnaev was in "serious if not critical condition." Sources told CBS News' Miller that Tsarnaev suffered gunshot wounds to the neck and leg and had lost a lot of blood before being captured.

A Justice Department official told the Associated Press that Tsarnaev will not be read his Miranda rights because the government is invoking a public safety exception. That exception allows law enforcement "to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation of a suspect and allows the government to introduce the statement as evidence in court," the wire service reported.

The residence of the takedown is less than a mile from where Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, the fugitive's brother and alleged co-conspirator in the marathon bombings, was killed during a shootout with law enforcement on Thursday night, CBS 2's Tony Aiello reported.

Officials React To Suspect's Capture

"We will determine what happened, we will investigate any associations these terrorists may have had and we'll continue to do what ever we have to do to keep our people safe," President Barack Obama said.

"We are so grateful to bring justice and closure to this case," Col. Alben said Friday night. "We are eternally grateful for the outcome of tonight."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said it was a "very complicated case" and "very challenging case" while adding there were "still some questions remaining to be answered."

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said her "thoughts and prayers" were with the victims and their families, adding "this will continue to be an ongoing and active investigation."

The conclusion to the harrowing day happened not long after law enforcement held a news conference saying the search for the suspect had gone cold. CBS 2's Lou Young then reported hearing gun shots at around 7 p.m., followed by many police cars and tactical units converging on the Franklin Street residence.

Earlier Friday, SWAT teams in armored vehicles took command of the tense and locked-down streets of Boston and its suburbs in an all-out hunt for the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect.

At that news conference early Friday evening, Col. Alben told reporters, "We do not have an apprehension of our suspect this afternoon, but we will have one. We're committed to that."

INTERPOL had also issued an international security alert, which detailed "the features of the improvised explosive devices used in the Boston Marathon bombings to assist law enforcement across its 190 member countries detect any similarly configured bombs," the organization said.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was known as the man in the white hat from the marathon surveillance footage, police said.

The FBI used State Department records to match the names to photos of the suspects at the marathon finish line Monday, CBS News' Bob Orr reported.

Violent Night Turns Into Intense Manhunt 

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

Norwalk, Conn. officials also said Boston police asked them to search an Amtrak train that left South Station in Boston at about 5 a.m. Friday.

Police from Norwalk, Stamford and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority boarded the southbound train in East Norwalk with at least one bomb-sniffing dog shortly before 8:30 a.m., but didn't find anything.

The suspects' clashes with police on Thursday night began only a few hours after the FBI released photos and videos of the two young men, who were seen carrying backpacks as they mingled among marathon revelers.

The bombings on Monday killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, and authorities revealed the images to enlist the public's help finding the suspects.

Exactly how the long night of crime began was marked by conflicting reports.

Police initially said the brothers robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cambridge, near the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but they later said the robbery there was committed by someone else.

A surveillance photo released by authorities of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came from a gas station where the suspects stopped.

They then shot to death an MIT police officer while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

"They encounter an MIT police officer and rather than see, 'Is he going to follow us? Is he going to chase us?' it appears that they came up and engaged him, killed him in his police vehicle, took off," CBS News' Miller said.

The officer died of multiple gunshot wounds. The Middlesex County District Attorney's Office identified the MIT officer as 26-year-old Sean Collier, who had worked at MIT since January 2012.

From there, the two suspects carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz, keeping him with them in the car for half an hour before releasing him at a gas station in Cambridge, police said. The man was not injured.

Authorities said both suspects were in the Mercedes when they encountered police, and then hurled explosives and exchanged gunfire with officers.

Miller reported that the explosives thrown at officers was the same type of pressure cooker bombs that were used in Monday's marathon attack.

That's when police said a transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was seriously injured. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was also critically injured during the exchange with police and later died at a hospital, authorities said.

His brother, Dzhokhar, then got back into the car to escape, backing over his brother's body in the process, CBS News reported.

Five blocks away, Dzhokhar hopped out of the car and fled on foot, police said. Watertown residents reported hearing sounds of the intense gunfight and explosions at around 1 a.m. Friday.

Boston cab driver Imran Saif said he was standing on a street corner at a police barricade across from a diner when he heard an explosion.

"I heard a loud boom and then a rapid succession of pop, pop, pop," he said. "It sounded like automatic weapons. And then I heard the second explosion."

He said he could smell something burning and advanced to check it out but area residents at their windows yelled at him, "Hey, it's gunfire! Don't go that way!"

Boston, Surrounding Areas On Lockdown

Throughout the day Friday police urged Boston residents to stay in homes as the hunt for the bomb suspect continued. Residents in Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge and the Allston-Brighton neighborhoods of Boston were also told to stay indoors.

Public transit in Boston was suspended before being restored by Gov. Patrick. Amtrak service also temporarily suspended between Boston and New York before limited service was eventually restored. Peter Pan Bus Lines suspended service to Boston, and Megabus canceled buses between Boston and other cities.

The Federal Aviation Administration had also imposed temporary flight restrictions in the Boston area. Logan International Airport remained open, but operated under heightened security.

As officers fanned out across the Boston area, Bryce Acosta, 24, came out of his Cambridge home with his hands up.

"I had like 30 FBI guys come storm my house with assault rifles,'' he said.  They yelled, "Is anybody in there?'' and began searching his house and an adjacent shed, leaving after about 10 minutes.

A young woman named Jessica Brusarge, who was visiting a friend in Watertown on Thursday night, said she was stopped by a law enforcement officer with an assault rifle.

She said he told her, "There's a foot pursuit coming this way so I want to be in between you and that."

"I was scared," she said.

Congressman: Suspects Had Cache Of Explosives

The senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said the two suspects had collected pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices before they confronted police.

Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger said, "They clearly amassed a small arsenal of explosives.''

Ruppersberger, who was briefed by authorities, said U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials plan to quickly pivot from their search for the surviving suspect to learn whether the brothers had any help or contact from terrorist groups inside or outside the U.S.

CBS News' Miller also reported that the FBI found explosives, pipe bombs with fuses and some sort of synthetic powder inside Tamerlan Tsarnaev's apartment on Norfolk Street in Cambridge.

FBI evidence response teams were seen going in and out of the house, which neighbors said contained three separate living units, WBZ reported.

Suspects Of Chechnyan Origin

The suspects were identified by law enforcement officials and family members as ethnic Chechen brothers from Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in southern Russia. They lived near Boston and had been in the U.S. for about a decade after receiving asylum, an uncle said.

A law enforcement source told CBS News that Dzhokhar Tsarvaev became an American citizen on Sept. 11, 2012. He arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa in April 2002 and sought asylum in September of that year.

There was no immediate word on whether Tamerlan was an American citizen.

Dzhokhar was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and lived in a dormitory there, according to other students. Students there said he was on campus this week after the bombings.

Relatives Of Bombing Suspects React

The uncle of the bombing suspects, Ruslan Tsarni, said he was "absolutely shocked" at the news and called the older brother a "loser."

"I just wished they never existed," Tsarni said. "I'm wordless."

Speaking to reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, Md., he said the family was "ashamed" and urged his nephew to surrender.

Alvi Tsarni, another uncle of the suspects, told CBS News he, too, was shocked about learning news of his nephews.

"It's not possible. My nephews can't do this stuff. There's no way," he said.

Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is "a true angel.''

"Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here,''  the father said.

"They were set up, they were set up!'' he exclaimed. "I saw it on television; they killed my older son Tamerlan.''

Anzor Tsarnaev, badly agitated, gave little more information and ended the call angrily, saying, "Leave me alone, my son's been killed.''

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