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Second Boston Bombing Suspect Captured; Family Members of Suspects Speak Out
Aired April 20, 2013 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): One word says it all: captured. That is the fate of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
And this was the reaction to his capture.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA! USA! USA! (Inaudible).
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Cheers for Boston's finest, standing ovations in the streets, the local, state and federal authorities who brought a successful end to a tragic, horrendous week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Hello, everyone, I'm John Vause at the CNN Center.
SESAY: I'm Isha Sesay, and welcome to CNN's continuing coverage of the capture of the final suspect in the Boston marathon bombings.
The end of this horrific week did not come peacefully. But it certainly could have been a lot worse than it was.
VAUSE: Before it was all over, a police officer would be shot to death, the same for one of the suspected bombers, the older brother of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Let's get details on how it all went down. Here's Brian Todd.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The release of these images on Thursday afternoon let the suspects know the Feds were on to them, even if the authorities didn't know their names yet or where to find them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We consider them to be armed and extremely dangerous.
TODD (voice-over): Around 10:00 pm that night it all began to unravel. The suspects went to a convenience store outside of Boston in Cambridge, near the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They allegedly used a stolen ATM card to get money. Then they headed to the MIT campus, where shots rang out.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: MIT is currently saying that the situation is active and extremely dangerous. TODD (voice-over): An MIT police officer was killed in his car, shot multiple times. Police swarmed, but the suspects were on the move.
Just blocks away, a Mercedes SUV was hijacked at gunpoint. A source tells us the suspects made a stunning confession to the driver that they were the marathon bombers. The driver was released at a gas station about a half-hour later. Remarkably, he wasn't hurt.
Now the chase was on, into the night and into the Boston suburb of Watertown.
Just after 1:00 am, witnesses heard gunfire; dozens of officers moved in, SWAT teams in full body gear carrying assault rifles.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard gunshots and then we saw the explosion. I actually saw a black SUV come down Laurel Street, cross over Dexter. It looked like it hit a police car and then they were just shooting at that and just unloaded with that.
TODD (voice-over): Police now knew who they were dealing with, two brothers, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev and 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They seemed cornered and were desperate to escape. Police say they threw explosives out the window at them. The older brother got out of the car; he was apparently ready to go down and take others with him.
We're told he was wearing explosives and a device to trigger them. Police shot him. He would die soon. But first, his younger brother, in a car, ran over him and then escaped. With the fugitive on the run, more than 9,000 officers were mobilized. They went door to door, searching homes in Watertown. Residents were told to stay off the streets.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is my home and it's scary to think of your home as like a war zone almost.
TODD (voice-over): Around 4:00 am, authorities released a new photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a gray sweatshirt, apparently taken from a convenience store camera.
GOV. DEVAL PATRICK, MASS.: There is a massive manhunt under way.
TODD (voice-over): Boston area residents woke up to a city in lockdown and one of the biggest manhunts in the nation's history. Public schools and universities like Harvard and MIT closed. Trains, buses, subways ordered to stay put, a historic city in danger and in fear.
ED DAVIS, BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: We believe this to be a terrorist. We believe this to be a man who's coming here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.
TODD (voice-over): Brian Todd, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEO CLIP) SESAY: Well, here now is one of the brief glimpses that we got Friday night of the suspected bomber. This photo tweeted by CNN affiliate WMUR was taken by a reporter, Jean Mackin (ph). It shows Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's face through the window of an ambulance as the wounded 19- year-old was taken away after Friday night's shootout in Watertown.
Pamela Brown is standing by for us, live at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. That's where the suspected bomber has been taken.
Pamela, I know that Boston Commissioner Ed Davis described Dzhokhar's condition as serious when he was taken into custody. Have hospital authorities given us any details about his injuries?
PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, last we heard, Isha, he is still in serious condition. We've heard from authorities that he went through a substantial amount of blood loss. He looked -- it appeared that he endured blood loss after what was a gunfight with authorities yesterday morning.
And the trail of blood actually led authorities to him on a boat there in Watertown, Massachusetts. There was another gunfight at the boat and there's a possibility that he might have sustained injuries during that gunfight. We don't know that for sure, but we do know that, at this point, he is still in serious condition here at the hospital.
SESAY: 4:00 am Eastern time, what kind of security presence is there at the hospital right now?
BROWN: Yes, I'm sorry. If you could repeat the question? It's -- there was a car driving by.
SESAY: No worries, Pamela. Just trying to get a sense of the security presence there at the hospital?
BROWN: Yes, actually, there are eight security officers at the front of the hospital right now. There was a larger presence here last night when he was arriving. And since then, it appears that number has gone down somewhat. But there are still a fair amount (sic) of officers here, at least eight at the entrance the last time we checked.
But outside, where we are right now, we don't see any officers.
SESAY: And do we get any sense from hospital officials as to when we will get a formal briefing on Dzhokhar's condition?
BROWN: We are hoping for a briefing soon. We've learned that the FBI is now taking over any requests on his condition. So of course the hope is that sometime today, that we will learn more from the FBI about any updates of the injuries and his condition.
SESAY: And it's my understanding that Beth Israel is the same hospital that Dzhokhar's brother, Tamerlan, was actually taken to, correct? BROWN: That is correct. His brother was taken here yesterday morning and was pronounced dead here at the hospital and, of course, now, he is here recovering from injuries. And as you can imagine, that has caused some consternation around here.
We spoke to -- we were at various hospitals yesterday and spoke to patients and they were just saying -- the concern was before we knew he was here at this hospital, that, of course, that this person who was -- may be responsible for the bombings on Monday allegedly, according to authorities, could be in the hospital.
So there's definitely concern here. And you know, people are definitely on edge right now.
SESAY: Yes, indeed, Pamela Brown joining us there from outside Beth Israel Hospital.
Pamela, appreciate it, thank you.
VAUSE: Isha, now that the manhunt is over, the legal process is just getting started.
Anderson Cooper spoke with our senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin. He asked him, what comes next?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: The first thing that will happen is that the U.S. attorney's office will prepare a complaint, which will be an affidavit by an FBI agent, which will lay out the basics of the case against him. He will then be arraigned. He will get a defense attorney and he will have an arraignment.
Now in normal circumstances, someone arrested on a Friday night would probably not be arraigned until Monday morning. Just because of the extraordinary circumstances here, he might be arraigned tomorrow if he's in medical shape to be arraigned.
At the arraignment, two things will happen. There will be a discussion of bail. He will not get out on bail, obviously. But they will set what's called a preliminary hearing 30 days forward.
The preliminary hearing will not happen. What will happen is in those 30 days, in the next 30 days, he will be indicted by a grand jury with the initial charges. Then the case will be assigned to a federal district judge and that's when the case will really begin.
But the next legal event will be an arraignment, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps Monday, in any case, at a time when he's physically able to be arraigned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: A long legal road ahead.
Well, several members of the suspect's families talked to the media on Friday. Their reaction ranged from disbelief to disgust.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY (voice-over): The widow of Tamerlan Tsarnaev released a statement from her family.
The note reads, "Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred. In the aftermath of the Patriots' Day horror, we know that we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted. Please respect our family's privacy in this difficult time.
Well, the mother of the suspects also said neither of her sons ever talked about terrorism or showed any inclination.
ZUBEIDAT TSARNAEV, SUSPECTS' MOTHER: My youngest was raised actually -- like raised from eight years. He was raised in America. And my oldest son, he is like, you know, really, really proper and raised and -- in our house never -- nobody talked about the terrorism.
And my son, Tamerlan, really was a -- got involved in the religion, you know, like religious politics five years ago. So he started following his own road (inaudible). And he never, he never told me that he would be like on the side of Jihad.
He was counseled by FBI like for five -- for three, five years. They knew what my son was doing. They knew what actions and what the sites on Internet he was going.
How could this happen? How could they -- they were counseling every step of him and they're telling today that this is a terrorist act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Now, the father of the two brothers suspected in the Boston bombings has also been talking from his home in Dagestan and he is angry. He says he doesn't believe his sons are guilty and is particularly upset with police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANZOR TSARNAEV, SUSPECTS ' FATHER (through translator): Someone framed them. I don't know who exactly did it, but someone did, and being cowards, they shot the boy dead. There are cops like this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): When you try calling the younger one, the phone is off?
TSARNAEV (through translator): All phones are switched off. I can't even get through to my brothers. One of them is a great lawyer and I can't get through to him.
I want to get more information. Those are my kids. You understand? I'm afraid for my other boy. Maybe he will be shot dead, too. They will say, well, he had weapons. Kids with weapons? You don't find weapons in a garbage dump.
I have nothing more to say. It's all because I'm afraid for my son and his life. They should arrest him, maybe, and bring him, but alive, alive. And justice should decide who's right and who is guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): You've been living there for a long time. Have you ever had any complaints about the justice there?
TSARNAEV (through translator): No, never. But I didn't ever face it, so how can I know about the justice system there? I didn't have any problems.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The day before you spoke to your elder son, what did he tell you?
TSARNAEV (through translator): He said everything was OK. I even asked him, how is Dzhokhar? Did you help him, look after him and make sure he is studying well, so he would spend less time with friends and more time studying?
You quit the university because you got married early. So let the kid at least graduate, because in this life a person who doesn't learn is working, working hard. That's why I'm always telling them, study, study, study.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Did you talk about this explosion and what happened there?
TSARNAEV (through translator): No, not at all. Thank Allah that they were not there and didn't suffer. This is it.
So what explosion? I honestly can't imagine who could do this. Whoever did it is a bastard. I have nothing more to say.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: As you see there, a range of emotions being expressed by the suspected bombers' family members. Two of the suspected bombers' uncles live in the U.S. state of Maryland. One of them went on live TV Friday, visibly upset, pleading that his nephew, who was still on the run, to give himself up.
He said the man had brought shame on their family and, quote, "the entire Chechen ethnicity."
RUSLAN TSARNI, SUSPECTS' UNCLE: I want to speak on behalf of the entire Tsarnaev family. What happened and what we heard this morning about people associated for, I would, by the family, by family associated. I want to start, and I will finish with that.
First, the only purpose here is just to deliver our condolences and appreciate people (inaudible) victims here, those who have been murdered, those who have been injured. This boy, this Chinese girl, this young 29 years old girl -- I don't remember (inaudible). I've just been following this. I've been following it from the very -- from day one, but never, ever would imagine that somehow the children of my brother would be associated with that.
So it is atrocity. Where (inaudible) were shocked. And again, I don't know. This family does not know how to share their grief with these (inaudible) victims.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: A lot of people now asking why? Why was this attack carried out in Boston?
And some clues may, in fact, be in the Russian republic of Dagestan. That is where the family comes from.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): And that is where Nick Paton Walsh has been looking for possible motives. He joins us now live from Dagestan's capital.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: In fact, Nick, you were outside school number one, I understand, where the two brothers, they briefly attended that school for some time.
What are they saying there about these two brothers?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the school director who started were shortly after they left in March 2002, still recalls people saying that they were good pupils; nothing bad said of them at all, frankly.
But the school registrar here gives very interesting detail. It's just quite specifically that the four Tsarnaev siblings, two sisters, two brothers, came here in September 2001 from Kurdistan and then left on the 25th of March 2002, directly for America according to the documents there. And that does tally, perhaps, where three of the siblings.
But it does leave a discrepancy in what happened with Tamerlan, the now deceased Boston bomber, say police. He was not reported by U.S. officials to have reached the United States until 2006 on a green card.
So questions to what exactly was he doing for those five years? Was he here? Was he somewhere else in the world or perhaps in the U.S. by some other means? And certainly, that could be questioned as to he'd stayed in Dagestan, what kind of influence in the increasing radicalization and violence in this restive southern region could have had upon him.
That was a very difficult time here, 2001, just after the second Chechen war, the overspill of violence into the regions to the west and the east of Chechnya. I'm to the east of it here in Dagestan.
And real concerns that the extremists that began to infiltrate the Chechen separatist movement in that second war perhaps got a foothold in Dagestan; Russian security sources saying they became affiliated in many ways, an ideology with Al Qaeda and real concerns, I'm sure, that perhaps the extremism here, had he remained in the country for five years, might have rubbed off upon him, John.
VAUSE: Given all of that, the father says the boys were set up, that they had nothing to do with this. There is general disbelief coming from some members of the family.
What are people there saying? Is that a shared opinion?
WALSH: They are echoing that disbelief of the neighbors, exactly the same, calling them pillars of community; a shopkeeper recalling Anzor as a very humble man who'd buy a banana, two bananas and some milk- type drink common out here, called kefir, from her particular shop on many days.
So yes, disbelief echoed. And I think that possibly stems in some ways from a general distrust of the authorities and law enforcement in this particular region, so much corruption, so many human rights abuses recorded by acts of this sphere that often makes people simply distrust whatever police or authorities are actually saying.
And that may also be the case with the U.S. official statement here about them being to blame. But a real disbelief here, of course. And I think certainly I'm sure underlying all that, a real fear that there was a proven link to extremism here in Dagestan. That could only be bad for this region, John.
VAUSE: And there's another piece of the puzzle here, Nick. Back -- what was it, 2012 I think, Tamerlan, the older brother, the one who is now dead, made a trip back to Dagestan. Do we know what he was doing at the time? Do we know why he went?
WALSH: We don't know the full scope. We do know from January to July he was somewhere in Russia. I do know from speaking to the shopkeeper who lives opposite the father's house that he was there for a month in summer of 2012 last year, she describes, you know, the summer clothing he was in and how hot it had been at that particular time.
And she says he was purely there to help his father in the work he does around this town, refurbishing apartments and buildings. (Inaudible) making a living. So a real sense from her that he was simply just here to assist his parents in their work. But it doesn't account for the five months ahead of that.
We don't know where he was in Russia during that period of time if it was, in fact, he stayed in Russia and not one of the satellite states around it. So many questions to be asked, I think, really in this town they don't seem to want to give answers. They seem to simply want to share the father's disbelief.
But the more we look, the holes we see, the greater possibility there is for involvement from this region, John.
VAUSE: OK, Nick, still with many unanswered questions. Hopefully, you will get some answers in the coming days. We appreciate it, Nick Paton Walsh, live for us from Dagestan.
You're watching CNN's continuing coverage, 20 minutes past 4:00 in the morning here on the East Coast. But there is still much to report on this breaking news story.
SESAY: Yes, indeed, many questions still to be answered as you discovered there in that brief conversation with Nick Paton Walsh. We'll have continuing coverage of this breaking news story after a quick break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: Welcome back to CNN's coverage of the capture of the second Boston bombing suspect.
VAUSE: I'm John Vause here at CNN's World Headquarters in Atlanta, along with Isha Sesay. We are continuing coverage over the next hour and a half and all day here on CNN. The capture brought to an end a massive manhunt and a very intense day for the city of Boston. Let's take a look now at a map of the timeline and how the drama played out during the past 24 hours.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): It started late Thursday night. Police say the two suspects stopped at a convenience store in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Soon after that, a police officer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, was fatally shot while he was in his car.
Authorities then say the two brothers hijacked another car, a black Mercedes SUV. They did that at gunpoint. It all happened just a few blocks away. Police then began chasing them into the Watertown area.
The police and the suspects got into a shootout. The officers wounded one of the men, later identified as the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He was declared dead at the hospital.
Fast forward to Friday evening, authorities say they had the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, cornered on a boat in the back yard of a house in Watertown. Now after a tense standoff that lasted more than an hour, Boston police confirmed Dzhokhar was in custody, Isha.
SESAY: Well, John, President Obama spoke to reporters shortly after Dzhokhar was captured. He said an important chapter in this tragedy is now closed. But he's out to find out why, why these brothers allegedly carried out a bombing plot and whether anyone else was involved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One thing we do know is that whatever agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not -- cannot prevail. Whatever they thought they could ultimately achieve, they've already failed.
They failed because the people of Boston refuse to be intimidated. They failed because, as Americans, we refuse to be terrorized. They failed because we will not waver from the character and the compassion and the values that define us as a country, nor will we break the bonds that hold us together as Americans.
That American spirit includes staying true to the unity and diversity that makes us strong like no other nation in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: You heard the president there, "like no other nation in the world," and what a past 24 hours it has been for people in and around Boston, just days after the marathon bombings, a terrifying firefight had residents of Watertown scrambling, scrambling for cover in their own homes.
Brooke Baldwin shows us how a single person sent a city into a lockdown.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is an active incident in Watertown right now.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A city in terror after a night of chaos and violence.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Advising all Watertown, East End residents to remain in their homes.
BALDWIN (voice-over): Residents of the Boston suburb, Watertown, woke up in the middle of the night during a shootout between police and the Boston marathon bombing suspects.
They say it was like being in the middle of a war zone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard gunshots and then saw the explosion. I actually saw a black SUV come down Laurel Street, cross over Dexter, looked like it hit a police car, and then they were just shooting at that and then just loaded with that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I freaked out. I called 9-1-1. And they were like we don't want to freak you out, but there is a shooting right outside your house. He's like, you need to get down; you need to get away from the doors and windows.
So I was like freaking out. I just heard explosion after explosion. So I crouched down in my doorway and I saw the bullet come from here through there. It was so scary. It was so loud.
BALDWIN (voice-over): Police rushed into homes with guns drawn, many families' lives disrupted. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Families are still out here on Laurel Street. These are families, roughly eight of them, who were abruptly awoken from a dead sleep, many of them. These are families who have little children.
They saw a SWAT team, like a group of police officers, banging on their door. They were awoken.
I had one gentleman who said he awoke to long rifle guns with chase (ph) and police officers saying, get out, get out.
BALDWIN (voice-over): One suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed; his brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on the run, prompting a massive manhunt and a lockdown of the entire city of Boston and its suburbs.
COMMISSIONER ED DAVIS, BOSTON POLICE: We believe this to be a terrorist. We believe this to be a man who has come here to kill people. We need to get him in custody.
GOVERNOR DEVAL PATRICK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Stay indoors with their doors locked and not to open the door for anyone other a properly identified law enforcement officer.
BALDWIN (voice-over): The streets? Deserted. Public transit? Shut down. Schools and universities, closed, as heavily armored police urgently search for Tsarnaev before he can hurt anyone else.
TSARNI: I say, Dzhokhar, if you're alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: A day of great tension for Boston residents. In between the shootout and the car chase on Thursday and the capture of the second suspect on Friday, there was this: much of the Boston area was on police lockdown. You heard Brooke talk about some of this.
Authorities asked everyone to stay indoors while they searched for the remaining bombing suspect. Schools and universities, well, they shut their doors. Train and bus services were halted and sporting events were canceled. It's estimated the shutdown cost the city more than $330 million.
VAUSE: But then, when it was all over, there was the celebration on the streets of Watertown. Residents turned out to show their thanks to police.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): Many residents, understandably, say it is a massive relief that the accused second bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been captured. People across Boston poured onto the streets Friday night after being urged to stay at home during the 24-hour-long manhunt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Jubilant crowds also agreed that the SWAT team that helped in this successful manhunt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): The governor of Massachusetts added his thanks, but as the celebrations continued, one Boston police officer said to the crowd, "If you want to thank us, just go home."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Well, that relief -- that relief quickly spread across Boston after police announced they had got their man. It has been a terrifying week here. But as Poppy Harlow reports, that fear, thankfully, is now gone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM CORRESPONDENT: It was really just moments after the news came that police had captured the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing that the streets here in Boston literally erupted in jubilation, in cheers.
We ran into a group of, I'd say, about 400 college students from Northeastern University. They just filled the streets outside of their dorms. They were sitting on the stoops. They were jumping in the streets, waving American flags, chanting things like, "USA, USA," and they were saying, "This is Boston. This is Boston."
You could hear the joy in their voice. Some of them told me how scared they have been all week. Some of them haven't had class all week because of how close their university is to the crime scene. They told me that now they feel like they're safe, they can go back to class. They can rest again.
And it wasn't just here in Boston. It is across this country. It is around the world. It is 30,000 feet up in the air. We heard a story of a flight that was ongoing while this news broke, and the pilots announced that the suspect number two had been captured. And the entire plane erupted in applause. So it's really being felt everywhere.
But amidst all of this jubilation, we have to remember this is a city that is still reeling from such a tragedy. At this hour, you still have 58 people that are recovering from injuries from the attack in Boston area hospitals. Three of them are in critical condition, two of them are children and then, of course, you still have those four beautiful lives that were lost.
The officer who was murdered last night, Sean Collier; the 8-year-old beautiful boy, Martin Richard, who died from the attack; you have the girl, Krystle Campbell and, of course, the Chinese student studying here at Boston University, Lingzi Lu (sic), those four lives lost.
So something to keep in mind amidst smiles that I haven't seen here all week in Boston, the city still suffering such a tragedy and has such a long way to go. Back to you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: And that is an important point that in all of this, in all that jubilation, all the chants of "USA" right now in the past few hours in Boston, that this attack left four people dead and we'll have more on that when we come back after a short break.
SESAY: Yes, we definitely will. It is just after half past the hour. And we're going to have much coverage on the victims and where they are right now, how they're doing, those that are trying to recover from this attack.
And of course, we're going to take you step by step through how it came to be that they captured the remaining suspect of the Boston bombing. Stay with CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: You're watching CNN's continuing coverage of the capture of the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. I'm Isha Sesay.
VAUSE: Hello, everyone. I'm John Vause at the CNN Center. It is 35 past 4:00 in the morning on the East Coast. And here is what we know right now, the very latest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): The second suspect in Monday's Boston Marathon terror attack is in custody. After gunfire erupted Friday evening in the Boston suburb of Watertown where he was overnight he run, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently put up a fight after finding himself surrounded by police in a Watertown neighborhood.
SESAY (voice-over): What followed was a tense standoff and the wounded Tsarnaev was eventually captured and taken to a Boston hospital. You can see these images here. He can be seen through the window of the ambulance. The suspected bomber is listed in serious condition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not go quietly. Drew Griffin has more on the final moments of the manhunt that had Boston on edge.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just in the waning moments of the press conference which was announcing that, you know, basically they were going to have the movement out of Watertown, we heard bursts of automatic gunfire from what sounded like, I would say, four weapons.
They sounded all like the same weapon in terms of, you know, their make and model. So I'm only assuming that was a one-way shot being fired from police to the direction of the suspect. I didn't hear anything after that. And then silence. And then all of a sudden we saw this tremendous amount of police response going to the area, which we know now is the boat where this person was hiding. But it was unmistakable bursts of gunfire that began this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: The Tsarnaev brothers are suspected of leaving a trail of death and misery in their wake.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE (voice-over): MIT police officer Sean Collier was the last to die. He was shot and killed Thursday night, 26 years old.
It all began Monday afternoon at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The explosions, the first one, shown here in slow motion, ripped through a crowd of spectators. You can see at least one of the runners collapsing to the street.
In all, 178 people were wounded by the two bombs. Sixty remain in hospital, three people were killed, including 8-year-old Martin Richard.
The Richard family released a statement on Friday, thanking everyone who helped.
It reads, "We also thank the citizens and businesses that shared images and footage with investigators in hopes of advancing the investigation. It worked and tonight our community is, once again, safe from these two men.
None of this will bring our beloved Martin back or reverse the injuries these men inflicted on our family and nearly 200 others."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Well, the successful manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ended in a back yard in Watertown. In the end, the man who caused people in the Boston area to hide in their homes was, himself, hiding in a small boat. Brian Todd joins us now.
And, Brian, for much of Friday, there was this kind of eerie calm over Boston. But you have exclusive details of the dramatic last moment.
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do, Isha. We got to the scene, to the back of the house. We snaked through some alleys and some back lots. We got to the back of the house as police were negotiating with Tsarnaev to try to get him out from inside that boat that he was holed up in.
We got to within about 200 yards of the boat. And we saw it illuminated by police lights. We heard them talking to him. They -- he was -- they were saying things like, "Come out with your hands up. We know you're in there. Come out on your own terms." They were determined, Isha, to end this standoff peacefully. In the end, they did it, despite the fact that just a few moments earlier, they had exchanged gunfire with him. They had thrown in flash-bangs to try to disorient him into coming out.
This did not end so peacefully, but they did end it without hurting him further. He was wounded. He had lost some blood by the time he came out, but it could have ended much worse for him, of course. This was very tense until the final moments, Isha.
SESAY: And, Brian, this boat, the property it was on, had it been searched earlier on in the day? Because of course, I know that law enforcement had been going door-to-door in the area.
TODD: They certainly had, Isha. This is the house right behind us. They were saying that they were going door-to-door, searching 80 percent to more of the homes here. So, you know, they clearly, during that period, still didn't find them.
It's unclear whether they actually went through this one. You can probably surmise that there's a good chance that they did. But there's also a good chance that he might have been holed up inside that boat, under a tarp inside that boat, for much of the day. We may get some of those details later. But that could have been how he evaded them for so many hours.
SESAY: And do we know anything of the owners of that home or the people who live there?
TODD: We don't know much about the owners of the home.
We do know that he was found out essentially by a passerby who happened to be walking down the street. The passerby noticed some blood on the boat, got a little closer, took a look inside the boat, noticed some movement and, of course, had an awareness of everything that had been going on in the Watertown area overnight and into Friday.
So that person called the police and that's how the police got here. You know, very often, that's how these situations are resolved, by someone who happens to be there at the fortuitous moment.
SESAY: Yes, indeed, Brian Todd with some exclusive details as to how this manhunt came to its dramatic end.
Brian, always appreciate it. Thank you.
VAUSE: Isha, along with the question of motive, there is now another pressing issue for law enforcement in Massachusetts.
Did these men act alone? Were they part of a terror cell? Were there others out there who helped them?
Now security analyst Peter Bergen told Anderson Cooper he thinks it's likely that the bombers had help.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I think it's very interesting that they were able to detonate two bombs almost simultaneously. I think that's pretty hard. It suggests either practice in the United States or training elsewhere, or perhaps both.
We have had terrorists who have gone overseas, who have tried to detonate bombs in the United States; for instance, the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad. He was trained and he wasn't -- he drove his SUV into Times Square to detonate a bomb. It didn't work. So, even with training, sometimes people don't get it right.
And I think the idea that these people simply read a recipe on the Internet and built two very successful bombs doesn't -- it's very unlikely. So that's a first question.
The other question is, the motive, you know, the kind of question that President Obama raised in the briefing, which is, you know, how did they become radicalized in the United States? We have seen with the case of Major Nidal Hasan in Fort Hood, Texas, he was self-radicalized with a major Internet complexion to that.
Obviously, what these guys were doing on the Internet, who they emailed with, what they were reading, what kind of things they were downloading will be very key to this question of motivation.
And, finally, Anderson, you know, what was the older brother doing in Russia for six months last year? We have seen in the past Najibullah Zazi, who was an American citizen naturalized, came to this country. You know, a trip to Pakistan was the point at which he became trained how to use bombs, which he was planning to blow up in Manhattan. So, those I think are the three main questions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: No apart from arresting anybody else who may have been involved, analysts say it is important to know if the bombers had help, because that could quite simply prevent further attacks, Isha.
SESAY: Well, John, watching the coverage throughout Friday, you'll have been struck by a kind of discrepancy, how the actions of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stand in contrast to the profile that's emerging of a young man whose classmates describe him as a friendly student and a great athlete. Jim Acosta has more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, believed to be wearing the white baseball cap in the surveillance video released by the FBI, who looks even more boyish in this updated photo.
Relatives who haven't been in touch with Dzhokhar can only guess about his motives since he moved to the U.S. over a decade ago from the Russian Caucasus region and sought asylum with his family.
TSARNI: We are Muslims. We are Chechens. We are ethnic Chechens. Somebody radicalized them.
ACOSTA (voice-over): The suspect's uncle, who lives in Maryland, was asked by reporters what might have provoked Dzhokhar and his now dead brother, Tamerlan.
TSARNI: ...being losers.
ACOSTA (voice-over): But in tweets on what is believed to Dzhokhar's Twitter account, there is little sign of remorse.
"Ain't no love in the heart of the city. Stay safe, people," read one tweet posted after the bombing.
And two days later, "I'm a stress-free kind of guy."
On what's believed to be his account on a Facebook-like Russian social media website, the suspect's world view is described as Islam, his personal priority, career and money.
A video was posted showing the carnage from the civil war in Syria. U.S. officials say Dzhokhar became a U.S. citizen on September 11th of last year and attended high school in Cambridge outside Boston, where he even won a scholarship before enrolling at the Dartmouth campus at the University of Massachusetts.
Most friends and teachers say they never saw any signs of trouble.
DEANA BEAULIEU, SUSPECT'S HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND: Regular teenager. I didn't suspect anything. He was on the wrestling team. He went to parties with, you know, other students. Yes. He went to the prom.
LARRY AARONSON, SUSPECT'S HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER: He was a wonderful kid. We were proud of him. You know, he was an outstanding athlete. He was -- he was -- there's nothing -- you know, he was never a troublemaker in the school.
ACOSTA (voice-over): But another friend says one conversation does stand out.
ERIC MERCADO, SUSPECT'S FRIEND: A friend of mine who has, you know, we've been in contact this morning, and he had told me that there was a conversation that him and another close friend of mine had had just recently, maybe about six months to a year ago, in regards to terrorism, the acts of terror, not being a serious issue if you come from a place that I come from.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Still, the suspect's father told Russian television he believes his sons were set up.
TSARNAEV (through translator): Someone framed them. I don't know who exactly did it, but someone did. And being cowards, they shot the boy dead. There are cops like this.
ACOSTA: The mother and an aunt of the suspects are also expressing their doubts. In the words of their mother, "Nobody talked about terrorism." Jim Acosta, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: And some of those who know Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are actually coming forward with their stories. One of his friends spoke with our Piers Morgan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BASSEL NASRI, FRIEND OF DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV: We used to play soccer together. We used to hang out a few times. We weren't too close -- we were more acquaintances than friends. But he was really mostly a pretty good guy in that sense. He would always like ask for -- if you needed any help with anything. So I'm really surprised at the outcome of what happened in the past week or so.
PIERS MORGAN, CNN HOST: The picture that's being painted by some who knew the family is that he was slightly in thrall of his older brother, who was six, seven years older than him, and had clearly become more and more fundamentalist in his Islamic beliefs.
Did you get any sense when you spoke to Dzhokhar that he was getting very religious suddenly or had suddenly changed his political sentiments?
NASRI: Not at all, to be honest. He would -- I would -- I would name him as very unreligious, to be honest. I never really thought him to be religious at all.
The thing about him is that, I guess, he followed -- and his brother who is more probably like a father figure to him, since his father is all the way across the -- all across the world, so I guess he was very influenced heavily by his brother, in that sense.
MORGAN: When you heard that it was Dzhokhar that the FBI were looking for, what was your reaction to that?
NASRI: To be honest, the first time I saw the picture of the suspects on -- I saw the picture on Reddit, the picture of the suspects, you know, those were the blurry kind, at first I thought there was some resemblance there, but not enough to contact any authorities. It was probably bad on my part not to do so.
But then after -- when everything unraveled today with the whole evacuation of UMass Dartmouth and all that kind of stuff, I realized that, like, it was actually him. I was -- at first I was in disbelief. But it turns out that it was him and...
MORGAN: You were both at UMass Dartmouth. And apparently he was, even as recently as Wednesday, leading a perfectly normal life on campus, attending various events, including a party.
NASRI: Yes. I don't know about that. The last time I saw him was two Mondays ago. Not the Monday of the bombing, the Monday before that, is when he gave me a ride to a soccer event that we were holding off-campus.
MORGAN: And how did he seem to you?
NASRI: He seemed very fine. He seemed as usual. He had just got his car back from his brother, who was borrowing it from him. So he seemed fine. And really it was just like regular conversation with him, like -- it was like a, what, 10-minute drive or whatever. And we were just talking about soccer and that kind of stuff.
MORGAN: I mean, how do you explain that so many people have come out today -- I've been watching it all day, thinking how can this 19-year old -- well, I have got a 19-year-old son who's about three days older.
So I'm trying to think of a kid at that age -- he's not a kid, he's not a child. He's a young man. He seems to be perfectly normal to all the people like you that had recent dealings with him, never threatening, not overtly religious, not particularly political. And yet he's been responsible for one of the worst terror atrocities in modern American history.
Do you have any possible, plausible, logical --
(CROSSTALK)
NASRI: I would say sibling influence is probably a big, big factor of that kind of thing. You'd be surprised of what like an older sibling can get a younger sibling to do.
We still don't know all the facts, that's why I'm very glad that he was -- that the Boston police were able to capture him alive, so we can get more about the -- more info on this topic, because we really don't know all the information.
We didn't -- we don't really know how, like if -- how he was coerced maybe into doing this. We don't really know what happened. So I'm looking forward to knowing more about this and interviews of him, hopefully, when he gets better and gets out of the hospital.
MORGAN: But he never gave you any sense of being anti-American or disenchanted with his life?
NASRI: No, not at all, not at all.
MORGAN: At university or anything?
NASRI: I would say he shares an American lifestyle, really, more than anything. So I wouldn't say he's anti-American at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Well, John, in the days ahead, we will continue to speak to people who knew these two boys -- these two men, I should say, and try and piece together who they really were and what could have motivated them.
VAUSE: The interesting thing is the relationship between the older brother and the younger brother. What is also interesting is what Dzhokhar was actually doing in between the bombing and when he got caught. We'll have more on that when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VAUSE: Seven minutes before 5:00 am here on the East Coast. This is CNN's continuing coverage of the arrest of the accused Boston bomber. I'm John Vause at the CNN Center.
SESAY: And I am Isha Sesay. Let's get the very latest after a very dramatic day here in the United States.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY (voice-over): You can hear it as you see those pictures, cheers for Boston's finest on Friday night, a standing ovation for local and federal authorities after they captured the second suspect in Monday's Boston marathon terror attack.
But it didn't happen peacefully. Gunfire erupted after police had Dzhokhar Tsarnaev surrounded in a neighborhood in the Boston suburb of Watertown.
What followed was a tense standoff. It ended with the injured Tsarnaev transferred to a Boston hospital. Look at these images with me. You can see him in this photo, through the window of the ambulance. Right now he's listed in serious condition.
The city of Boston was locked down while police searched for Tsarnaev. But, now, police say they're relieved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MYLES MARCUM, STUDENT: I feel relieved. (Inaudible) getting the suspect. I feel relieved and I feel like everybody else is relieved. We've all been watching the TV, the computer, the live updates since the beginning of this whole thing. And I just feel relieved and I feel like I can go back to school now and know that I'm safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Pure elation there. Well, the first word that police had apprehended the suspected bomber didn't come in a big announcement. Instead, it came on social media on Twitter. Boston police tweeted this, quote, "Suspect in custody. Officers sweeping the area. Stand by for further info."
And then moments later, Boston's mayor tweeting simply, "We got him."
VAUSE: And there is a lot more from social media. It is providing an insight into the teenage suspect, who was just captured in the past few hours. Christine Romans has that part of the story.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently had been tweeting since the Boston Marathon bombing, tweeting. Two friends of his tell CNN it is, in fact, his Twitter account.
His handle, @j_tsar, lists the name Jahar, an alternative Americanized form of his real name. He's got a picture of a grimacing lion for a profile. No description of the user excellent for the Muslim greeting, " Salam alaikum," or "Peace be upon you."
Now a Twitter account, like any personal account on today's social media, obviously, it's not a detailed look at a person's life.
It is just one of the dots, though, trying to connect to see who this suspect is. What do we learn about a 19-year-old bombing suspect from these actual tweets? You be the judge. Within hours of the bombings, he tweeted out this message, "Ain't no love in the heart of the city. Stay safe, people."
That could sound like a reference to the bombing. It's also a reference to a popular 1970s R&B song that's been covered and sampled by many, most recently by Jay-Z.
Later on that same night, he tweeted out a reply message to a friend, quote, "And they say what? God hates dead people or victims of tragedies? LOL," -- that means laugh out loud -- "those people are cooked."
The next day he tweeted, "I'm a stress-free kind of guy."
Now when you look back at the tweets in the months prior to the bombing he's accused of taking part of with his older brother, there's not much of a hint that he may have been planning anything of the sort. He tweeted out messages talking about movies, references to marijuana, to the Patriots football team.
He retweeted Will Farrell, for example, a lot of pop culture references, a lot of seemingly mundane, innocuous tweets, some with links to Russian rap music.
And a while back, he posted this photo, which his friends believe is a picture of his legs wearing shorts emblazoned with the words, "Cambridge Wrestling." His friends say he was a member of his high school wrestling team, 1,100 tweets in all, going back three years, a dozen messages after the bombing, one of them referring to Claritin, another more chilling. "Relax, bro, my beard is not loaded."
Another Twitter user retweeted that message, and added the words, "But my backpack is." Christine Romans, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: We will have much more in the hour here as we continue our live coverage of the aftermath of the situation there in Boston.
VAUSE: We will be live in Boston, because we are covering the story not just from Boston, but we're also going live to Dagestan, which is where the family lived, the brothers went to school there. We have Nick Paton Walsh, who is actually trying to find some clues to what may have been a possible motive, a lot more coming up in the next hour here on CNN. Please, stay with us.
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