A 19-year-old suspected of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings with his older brother was captured by police after a day-long manhunt on Friday that closed down the city and turned a working-class suburb into a virtual military zone.
Reuters reports that the capture sent waves of relief and jubilation through Boston and the suburb of Watertown, where armored vehicles roamed the streets and helicopters flew overhead through the day. Residents and police officers cheered and clapped when the suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was taken alive after a gunfight.
Bleeding and in serious condition, he was admitted to a Boston hospital, a Massachusetts State Police spokesman said.
A spokeswoman for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Kelly Lawman, confirmed on Saturday that Tsarnaev was being treated there, but declined comment on his condition. The FBI would be providing any updates, she said.
It was not yet clear when he would face initial charges.
Tsarnaev had been hiding in the stern of a boat parked in the backyard of a house in Watertown, police said. A resident called police after spotting blood on the boat.
President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House after the suspect’s capture that questions remained from the bombings, including whether the two suspects received any help.
Monday’s bombing, described by Obama as an act of terrorism, was the worst such attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001, and rattled nerves across the United States.
The brothers, ethnic Chechens who once lived in Russia, are suspected of setting off bombs made in pressure cookers and packed with ball bearings and nails at the crowded finish line of Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring 176.
The family of Martin Richard, an 8-year-old boy killed in the blast, welcomed the arrest.
“Tonight, our community is once again safe from these two men,” the family said in a statement.
The older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed on Thursday night in a shootout with police less than a mile from where Friday night’s capture took place.
After combing through a mass of pictures and video from the site in the minutes before the bombing, the FBI had publicized pictures of the two men on Thursday and asked the public for help in identifying them.
