The manhunt for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came to an end Friday night as he was taken into custody, NBC News reported at 8:42pm ET.
Tsarnaev, 19, and his brother Tamerlan, 26, were the two main suspects after three people died and more than 170 were injured in two blasts at the finish line Monday afternoon.
Tamerlan died early Friday amid a shootout with police. Earlier in the evening, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer was found shot dead and another officer critically injured. The suspects allegedly carjacked a vehicle and tossed explosives toward police during a firefight on the streets of Watertown, Mass.
The manhunt lasted much of Friday as residents of the Boston area were locked down in their homes. Local and state police, along with the FBI, conducted a door-to-door search for Dzhokhar in a 20-block stretch of central Watertown.
Tsarnaev surrendered to police after a tense standoff where shots were reportedly fired. He was found hiding in a covered boat in a Watertown backyard near the original search area. NBC reports he was suffering blood loss and at least one bullet wound.
After the suspects’ names were revealed by police, information about the pair emerged online throughout the day Friday.
Dzhokhar’s likely Twitter account was uncovered, as was a photo essay on Tamerlan, his apparent YouTube account (in which there was a playlist titled “Terrorists”), and other social media profiles. Fake Twitter accounts showed up for the suspects throughout the week, as false reports emerged in the media of a suspect’s arrest.
As the hunt for the suspects played out, Internet sleuths on Reddit and 4chan attempted to help out by identifying possible suspects in the crowd according to police descriptions, though innocent people were wrongly identified as likely suspects. Thousands offered assistance to those affected by the attacks, with more than $1 million raised for victims by Friday, while brothers looking for their missing parents tracked them down through the Internet.
Photo via FBI.gov