Boston-area residents joined together in prayer and reflection after a tumultuous week as the lone surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing lay hospitalised under heavy guard apparently in no shape for interrogation.
What Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will say and when are unclear. He remains in serious condition three days after being pulled bloody and wounded from a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard.
Meanwhile, the Boston police commissioner said investigators believe the two suspects were likely to have been planning “to attack other individuals”, based on the cache of weapons uncovered.
Ed Davis said authorities found an arsenal of home-made explosives after Friday’s gun battle.
“We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene the explosions, the explosive ordnance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had that they were going to attack other individuals,” Mr Davis said.
The scene of the gun battle was loaded with unexploded bombs, and authorities had to alert arriving officers to them and clear the scene, Mr Davis said.
One improvised explosive device was found in the Mercedes the brothers are accused of carjacking, he said.
The capture came at the end of a tense Friday that began with his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, dying in a gun battle with police. There was no immediate word on when Tsarnaev might be charged and what those charges would be.
The twin bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180. The most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence.
Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.
US officials said an elite interrogation team would question the Massachusetts college student without reading him his Miranda rights, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Such an exception is allowed on a limited basis when the public may be in immediate danger, such as instances in which bombs are planted and ready to go off.
ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is “not an open-ended exception” to the Miranda rule.
The federal public defender’s office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged.
President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the US for about a decade and lived in the Boston area had help from others. The president urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.