THE SECOND SUSPECT in the Boston Marathon bombings was discovered under the tarp of a boat in the backyard of a residential property in the Boston suburb of Watertown it emerged tonight.
The suspect, believed to be 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was taken into custody by law enforcement in Massachusetts after a dramatic hour-long stand-off in the backyard of a home in Franklin Street, Watertown.
At a late-night press conference, Boston police chief Ed Davis explained how minutes after police had lifted a day-long lockdown in Boston, a man went out of his house and saw blood on his boat in the backyard.
The man approached his boat, opened the tarp covering it and saw another man covered in blood.
Davis told the media that the homeowner retreated and called law enforcement who quickly arrived on the scene and engaged in a hour-long stand-off where the suspect was “not communicative”.
Eventually the authorities were able to apprehend the man alive and took him into custody.
“The citizens of Boston can be confident that the threat has been removed,” Davis told the media.
Massachusetts State Police Colonel Timothy Alben said: “We’re exhausted folks, but we have a victory here tonight.”
Alben explained how a police helicopter picked up the suspect’s heat signature in the boat and was able to direct tactical teams to the area.
Carmen Ortiz, US attorney, said authorities invoked a “public safety exemption” which meant that the suspect was not read his Miranda rights.
“This is still an active, ongoing investigation, we’re going to be reviewing all of the evidence before that sort of decision is made,” she said when asked if the government would be seeking the death penalty in the case.
She urged the public not to forget the victims of the bombings as well as MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was killed in an earlier shootout allegedly with the suspects, and Richard Donoghue, another law enforcement official, who she said was “fighting for his life”.
Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev are suspected of being behind the bombings at the finish line of the Boston marathon last Monday which killed three and left 170 injured.
Tamerlan was shot dead in an exchange of fire with police early yesterday while Dzhokhar, 19, had been on the run for much of the past 24 hours.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say