"THE SUSPECT IS RIGHT THERE"

An unprecedented manhunt that brought an entire city to a standstill Friday ended after nightfall as police cornered and took into custody the remaining suspect in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing.

DARREN MCCOLLESTER / GETTY IMAGES An officer removes a child from an area where a suspect was hiding in Watertown, Mass. One area resident said he saw two young men engaged in “constant gunfire” with police.

Just an hour after authorities said 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had escaped their grasp after an early-morning firefight in the Boston suburb of Watertown, more gunfire rang out.

With a helicopter hovering overhead, dozens of police cars sped to residential Franklin Street, where the suspect was found hiding in a boat in the backyard of a house. A man had noticed blood on the boat, lifted up a tarp covering it and noticed a bloodied man inside. Officers and FBI agents responding to the resident’s 911 call and surrounded the boat. There were reports of police using a “flash-bang” device to stun him and at one stage an exchange of gunfire. After a standoff of more than an hour, Boston police tweeted at 8:46 p.m. they had a suspect in custody.

“The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over,” the Boston Police Department tweeted.

Police said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had serious injuries believed to have been sustained early Friday morning during a firefight that saw his brother, Tamerlan, killed.

As news of the capture spread, a crowd that had gathered on a central Watertown street corner broke into applause. They continued to cheer as convoys of police cruisers sped down the street.

Josh Silva said he travelled to Watertown from South Boston to show the city would not be cowed by terrorists. “It’s about a call of duty in Boston,” he said. “Some of our own have been hurt, and we answer the call.”

As police moved in on Mr. Tsarnaev, they ordered Keyur and Ankita Patel into their apartment a few blocks from where he was captured, where they watched the activity through the slits of their venetian blinds.

“My heart is pounding right now,” Ms. Patel said. “The suspect is right there and the gunshots could come from anywhere,” Mr. Patel said.

Although there had been fears he was armed with explosives, the suspect was taken alive and transported to a hospital.

The streets of Watertown, a middleclass community along the banks of the Charles River, were filled with police and armoured vehicles for much of the day as 20 city blocks were swept in search of the suspect.

The manhunt for America’s most wanted suspect began after 10 p.m. Thursday when two men robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cambridge, Boston. Police initially said the two bombing suspects were responsible for the robbery, but later said they were checking that.

About 10:30 p.m., police received reports that Sean Collier, a campus security officer at MIT, had been shot while he sat in his police cruiser. He was found with multiple gunshot wounds, according to police. The officer was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police later called it “an assassination.”

A short time later, police received reports of an armed carjacking of a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge.

“The victim was carjacked at gunpoint by two males and was kept in the car with the suspects for approximately a half-hour,” the statement said.

He was later released, uninjured, at a gas station in Cambridge.

The carjacking victim said the brothers told him they were responsible for the bombing of the Boston Marathon.

Police began to search for the vehicle and pursued it into Watertown. During the chase improvised explosive devices were thrown from the car.

During that exchange, a transit police officer, Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded.

Then, about 1 a.m. Friday there was a dramatic shoot-out.

A Watertown resident, Andrew Kitzenberg, 29, said he looked out his third-floor window to see two young men of slight build engaged in “constant gunfire” with police officers. A police SUV “drove towards the shooters,” he said, and was shot at. It rolled out of control, Mr. Kitzenberg said, and crashed into two cars in his driveway.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev got out of the Mercedes and approached police. It was believed he had explosives on him. There was an exchange of gunfire and Tamerlan Tsarnaev was critically injured with gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m at the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston.

Mr. Kitzenberg said during the gunfight, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev got back into the SUV, turned it toward officers and “put the pedal to the metal.” He escaped, prompting the manhunt.

UMass Dartmouth officials said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev passed an apparently normal day at the school on Wednesday.