A police sniper mans his rifle atop an armored personnel carrier during a police assault on a house on Franklin Street during the search for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, in Watertown, Massachusetts April 19, 2013. PHOTO: REUTERS
WATERTOWN: An ethnic Chechen teenager suspected of conducting the Boston marathon bombings is in a serious condition and being treated in hospital after his dramatic capture, police said Friday.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was found hiding in a boat in the backyard of a house in the Boston suburb of Watertown, wounded and weary after a gun battle with police overnight in which his accomplice brother was killed.
Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said that with Tsarnaev's arrest, "the citizens of the city of Boston and this area can be confident that the threat has been removed."
Police, state troopers and FBI agents zeroed in on the boat on Franklin Street after a man went out of the house and saw blood on the boat, Davis said.
The man then opened the tarp covering the boat and saw a man covered with blood inside, and called police.
"I'm so happy because the people in the greater Boston area will be able to sleep tonight because of the work of these individuals," Boston Mayor Thomas Merino told reporters, in a tribute to police and law enforcement agencies.
Davis said a perimeter was set up around the boat before a major operation ended a drama that started with the twin bombing at the marathon on Monday.
"Over the course of the next hour or so, we exchanged gunfire with the suspect who was inside the boat," he said.
"And ultimately, the hostage rescue team of the FBI made an entry into the boat and removed the suspect who was still alive in the boat."
The two main suspects in the bombings that killed three people and wounded about 180 others - Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan - were located after a police officer was killed and another wounded during a violent spree overnight that began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus.
Davis said more than 200 rounds of gunfire were exchanged during that incident, and that the two men had hurled improvised explosive devices and handmade hand grenades at officers.
The 26-year-old elder brother died of bullet wounds and injuries from explosives strapped to his body, a hospital doctor said.
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@mark crowe: You get the feeling? How about getting the facts before spewing out statements?
As far as who they're linked to, time will tell if they acted independently or not. All that's known so far is that the older brother went to Russia for about 6 months in 2012. Perhaps he received his training then..? Don't know. His radical mindset was apparently becoming visible to those around him upon his return to the states. We'll never know his side, but perhaps the little brother can fill in some of the holes once he is willing and able to speak.
@Politically incorrect.: actually I did read your comment which is why I responded the way I did. Given the barbaric nature of the Chechens muslins one should not find what happened in Boston to be a surprise
@Harry Stone: I'm not saying that they were not Chechen, the suspects were indeed Chechen and they were certainly radicalized, if you're asking why or how the Russians would benefit from this, you should have read my previous comment in it's entirety.
Responding to my comment without reading it is just downright ignorant, you can't act smart.
Glad that they captured him alive and hope this brings to light what it really is that motivates a mere 19-year old to go so violent and take a hit at the core of his very existence-the humanity and brazen attack against the people who accepted him to be a part of their lives and called him his own. I also hope that he can reflect on what he did and live with the guilt of his unbelievably atrocious attack that killed and terrorized the poor souls that were there to celebrate life and cheer the runners up.
@Politically incorrect.:
so it must have been either swedes or Russians posing as muslins. But for what purpose?
Here's good a comment read elsewhere by an American on the suspects.
"However, a gaping hole in this analysis is the motivation that Chechen separatists would have had to initiate a terrorist act in the United States. If anything, one would expect the opposite. United States foreign policy has generally been quite amicable towards the Chechen people and often quite critical of the Russian government's campaigns of suppression and repression in Chechnya. It would be incredibly naive to overlook the possibility that US intelligence agencies will look into whether Russian intelligence services or some renegade factions thereof may have been behind this whole sordid affair.
Remember, similar terrorist acts in Moscow and other regions of Russia served as the pretext for a massive invasion of Chechnya by the Russian military in 1999. Various analysts and insiders, including former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, claimed that it was in fact the Russian special services that orchestrated the terrorists acts to rally public support behind the new war and the then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
During his time in London, Litvinenko wrote two books, Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within and Lubyanka Criminal Group, wherein he accused Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to power. He also accused Putin of ordering the October 2006 murder of Russian journalistAnna Politkovskaya.
On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalized in what was established as a case of poisoning by radioactive polonium-210 which resulted in his death on 23 November. The events leading up to this are a matter of controversy, spawning numerous theories relating to his poisoning and death. The British investigation into his death resulted in a failed request to Russia for the extradition of Andrey Lugovoy whom they accused of Litvinenko's murder"
The Chechens do not benefit from this.
Ungrateful brothers. We gave them asylum only to bite us back. Somehow I get a feeling he got his training or is related to Pakistan.