Yet more details are coming out about the dramatic final moments before surviving Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsranaev was captured by police on Friday night. There are three new bits of information: one is a just-released video that shows how infrared technology spotted Tsranaev and what happened next.
The three new bits developments:
1) A British paper quotes an unnamed source saying officials believe Tsranaev was part of a 12 person sleep cell. Take that with a grain of salt right now: it is NOT being hyped by most news organizations because its attributed to one unnamed source which means most news have NOT been able to confirm this or get the same quote. It isn’t that America’s news media is involved in some kind of conspiracy to keep the truth from the American public — no matter what you hear from Twilight Zone-ish ideologues or partisans.
2) Various reports indicate officials now believe Tsranaev’s neck wounds are because he tried to commit suicide, but most haven’t gone beyond that. A bit more info from CBS’s John Miller notes:
Currently, Tsarnaev is not in good shape and lost a lot of blood, explained CBS News correspondent John Miller. The suspect has a bullet wound to what appears to be the back of his neck and another to his leg. But it’s bullet wound to the neck that is actually pretty intriguing to investigators.
Of course, he and his brother were in a big shoot-out,” said Miller. “But [investigators are] saying that wound to the back of the neck is very possibly a suicide attempt. They say it appears from the wound that he might have stuck a gun in his mouth, and fired and actually just went out the back of his neck without killing him. That’s one of the reasons he’s unable to communicate, but he can understand what they’re saying. And they believe there will be a point where he will be able to talk to him.
3)A dramatic, fascinating video shot from a police helicopter shows how they spotted him using infrared techology and how the battle ended. Mailonline (which also has the video featured below) reports:
Authorities then used a helicopter equipped with a thermal imaging device to confirm that there was a body in the tarp covered boat and that the person was alive.
Hovering over the area, the helicopter spotted the heat signature of a person, confirming Henneberry’s suspicions.‘Our helicopter had actually detected the subject in the boat,’ Col. Timothy Alben of the Massachusetts State Police told NBC News. ‘We have what’s called a FLIR — a forward-looking infrared device — on that helicopter.
The chopper monitored the body in the boat for more than an hour before police moved in.
ATF, SWAT and K-9 units had descended upon 67 Franklin Street and engaged 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.
‘We used a robot to pull the tarp off the boat,’ David Procopio of the Massachusetts State Police said to CNN.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that Tsarnaev was shot twice by law enforcement in the gun battle which raged until his capture at approximately 8:45pm.
Law enforcement sources have suggested that Tsarnaev gave himself up voluntarily after realizing continuing resistance was fruitless.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.