Boston manhunt ends, bombing suspect captured
Boston Police say a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings is in custody after a manhunt that left the city virtually paralyzed and his older brother and accomplice dead.
Police announced via Twitter that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was in custody.
Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info.
— Boston Police Dept. (@Boston_Police) April 20, 2013
His brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed Friday in a furious attempt to escape police.
WBUR’s Curt Nickisch said it’s a relief to folks in Boston.
“It takes a huge weight off of the minds of everybody here in Watertown,” he said, “and I can tell you business is going to be good at bars tonight here in Boston.”
Nickisch said about the time the lockdown was lifted was when residents were headed home anyway and it’ll be closer to business as usual next week.
The brothers are suspects in Monday’s marathon bombings, which killed three people and wounded more than 180 others. The men are also suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer in his vehicle late Thursday.
Authorities in Boston had suspended all mass transit and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to stay indoors as the hunt for the remaining suspect went on.
The bombings on Monday killed three people and wounded more than 180 others, tearing off limbs in a spray of shrapnel and instantly raising the specter of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Chechnya was the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.
Investigators in the Boston case have shed no light on the motive for the bombing and have said it is unclear whether it was the work of domestic or international terrorists or someone else entirely with an unknown agenda.
The endgame — at least for Suspect No. 1 — came just hours after the FBI released photos and video of the two young men at the marathon’s finish line and appealed to the public for help in identifying and capturing them.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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