Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombing, was captured wounded but alive after hiding out in a boat parked in David Henneberry’s backyard in Watertown on Friday evening.
The arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev signaled the end of five days of terror set-off by the double bombing at the Boston Marathon finish line.
His older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lay dead in a furious 24-hour drama that transfixed the nation and paralyzed the Boston area with fear.
Relieved law enforcement officers began cheering and clapping after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was arrested and is now in a serious condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and is reported to have lost a great deal of blood.
Police cornered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev around 7 p.m., less than an hour after police lifted a stay-indoors order for the city and its suburbs.
A resident in his 60s, believed to be called David Henneberry, reportedly went outside to smoke and saw the tarpaulin cover of his 22-foot pleasure boat was disturbed off the top.
Checking to see what was wrong, David Henneberry, an avid boater who is a member of the Watertown Yacht Club, investigated and saw Dzhokhar Tsarnaev curled-up inside covered in blood.
David Hanneberry then “freaked out” and ran inside to call police – who dispatched a helicopter which used thermal imaging to confirm there was a person inside the boat.
“He looked and noticed something was off about his boat, so he got his ladder, and he put his ladder up on the side of the boat and climbed up, and then he saw blood on it, and he thought he saw what was a body laying in the boat,” David Henneberry’s neighbor, George Pizzuto said to ABC News.
“So he got out of the boat fast and called police.”
“That boat’s his baby. He takes care of it like you wouldn’t believe. And they told him it’s all shot up,” George Pizzuto said.
“He’s going to be heartbroken.”
Within minutes police, ATF, SWAT and K-9 units had descended upon 67 Franklin Street and engaged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a vicious gun battle – over 40 shots rang out in the quiet suburban neighborhood.
“There was an exchange of gunfire,” confirmed Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis at a news conference.
Authorities, using a bullhorn, had called on the suspect to surrender: “Come out with your hands up.”
“We used a robot to pull the tarp off the boat,” David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police said to CNN.
“We were also watching him with a thermal imaging camera in our helicopter. He was weakened by blood loss – injured last night most likely.”
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was shot twice by law enforcement in the terrific gun battle which raged until his capture at approximately 8.45 p.m.
Law enforcement sources have suggested that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev gave himself up voluntarily after realizing continuing resistance was fruitless.
The standoff and subsequent arrest came only minutes after authorities said during a news conference that the manhunt for the suspect appeared to come up empty.
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