The city of Los Angeles will pay $4.2 million to the two women injured when police mistakenly opened fire on their truck during the February manhunt for a disgruntled ex-LAPD police officer who killed four people in a rampage that paralyzed Southern California.

LA City Attorney Carmen Trutanich confirmed Tuesday to NBC4 that a deal has been reached with Margie Carranza and her mother, Emma Hernandez.

"The deal is relatively a very simple, very clean deal. It's a win-win for both parties," Trutanich said. "It closes this chapter in Los Angeles and LAPD history on all issues."

The $4.2 million will be split between the two women "any way they want," Trutanich said.

The shooting occurred Feb. 7 during a manhunt for Christopher Dorner. Earlier in the day, two Riverside, Calif., officers were ambushed in their police car, and authorities were on the hunt for Dorner and his Nissan Titan pickup truck.

At about 5 a.m., as the women were delivering newspapers in their Toyota Tacoma pickup in city of Torrance, police encountered them and opened fire.

Hernandez, 71, was shot twice in the back, and Carranza, 47, was injured by broken glass.

The search for Dorner ended Feb. 12 with a shootout and standoff in the Big Bear area.

Dorner was holed up in a cabin surrounded by authorities when a police tear gas canister shot into the residence started a fire. Dorner then shot and killed himself, according to deputies.

The Boston Marathon bombing suspect was captured alive but wounded Friday night — after holing up in a boat in a suburban backyard following a bloody rampage that left a cop dead and a daylong manhunt that shut down the city.

The arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and the earlier death of his brother during a firefight with cops, ended five days of terror sowed by the double bombing at the marathon finish line, which killed three people, wounded 176 and left the city of Boston on edge.

"We got him," Boston Mayor Tom Menino tweeted.

"CAPTURED!!! The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won," the Boston Police Department said on its Twitter account.

Cops cheered as the suspect was taken into custody in Watertown, Mass., just before 9 p.m. Later, the people of Watertown flooded the streets, cheering every passing police car and armored vehicle in an impromptu parade. Chants of "USA! USA!" broke out. In Boston, people danced in the streets outside Fenway Park.

Police cornered Tsarnaev -- a naturalized U.S. citizen of Chechen origin -- around 7 p.m., less than an hour after police lifted a stay-indoors order for the city and its suburbs.

A resident had gone outside to smoke and noticed a tarp on the boat was flapping, a relative told NBC News. When he went to investigate, he saw what looked like a curled-up person and bloody clothes.

The man "freaked out," ran into the house and called police, the relative said.

Thermal imaging from helicopters confirmed there was a person in the boat, officials said.

Over the course of two hours, several bursts of gunfire could be heard. The police exchanged fire with Tsarnaev, threw flash-bang grenades designed to disorient him and brought a negotiator to the scene as night fell, officials said.

Just before 9 p.m., the wounded Tsarnaev was taken into custody. "He sustained significant blood loss," a law enforcement official at the scene said.

As an ambulance took the suspect to Boston Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital — where he was in serious condition — people lining the streets applauded in joy and relief.

“We are so grateful to be here right now, so grateful to able to bring justice and closure to this case,” Massachusetts State Police Col. Timothy Alben said at a briefing. “We’re exhausted, folks, but we have a victory here.”

President Barack Obama praised the outcomes but said many questions remained. Among them, he said: “Why did young men who grew up and studied here as part of our communities and our country resort to such violence?”

Authorities are also not sure of a motive or whether the suspects had help. Even as the standoff took place in Watertown, the FBI was taking three people in for questioning in New Bedford, Mass., who were believed to be former roommates of Tsarnaev.

"No one was detained. No one was arrested," a spokesman with the Massachusetts FBI office later said, once the two men and one woman questioned in connection with Tsarnaev were released.

But the president declared: “Whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not, cannot, prevail. Whatever they thought they could achieve, they’ve already failed.”

Tsarnaev will be questioned by a federal team called the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which includes officials of the FBI, CIA, and Defense Department, an Obama administration official said.

His apprehension capped a manhunt that had the city of Boston and its suburbs on total lockdown after the execution of a college campus patrol officer, a carjacking and the death of Tsarnaev's 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, during a 200-bullet confrontation with cops.

The overnight violence had triggered an extraordinary shutdown of transportation, schools and businesses in Boston and its suburbs, with police warning more than a million people to hunker down behind locked doors while SWAT teams fanned out and bomb squads collected seven homemade explosive devices.

The brothers' bloody last stand began about five hours after the FBI released surveillance photos of two "extremely dangerous" men suspected of planting two bombs near the finish line of Monday's Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding 176.

Read more: Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing?

Tips about the identity of the suspects were still pouring in when the Tsarnaev brothers fatally shot Massachusetts Institute of Technology officer Sean Collier, 26, in his vehicle at 10:20 p.m., law enforcement officials said.

The brothers then carjacked a Mercedes SUV, holding the driver captive for a half-hour while they tried to use his cash card to get money from three ATM's, a source said. At the first, they put in the wrong number; at the second, they took out $800 and at the third, they were told they had exceeded the withdrawal limit, the source said.

The carjacking victim was released unharmed at a gas station in Cambridge, sources said. He told police the brothers said they were the marathon bombers and had just killed a campus officer.

As the duo sped in his car toward Watertown, a police chase ensued and they tossed explosive devices out the window, officials said.

There was a long exchange of gunfire, according to Andrew Kitzenberg of Watertown, who took photos of the clash from his window and shared them via social media.

“They were also utilizing bombs, which sounded and looked like grenades, while engaging in the gunfight,” he told NBC News in an interview. “They also had what looked like a pressure-cooker bomb.

“I saw them light this bomb. They threw it towards the officers,” he said. “There was smoke that covered our entire street.”

A transit officer, identified as Richard H. Donahue, 33, was seriously injured during the pursuit. Authorities said he underwent surgery at Mount Auburn Hospital.

Kitzenberg said he saw the firefight end when Tamerlan Tsarnaev ran toward the officers and ultimately fell to the ground.

Tamerlan -- the man in the black hat from FBI photos released six hours earlier -- had an improvised explosive device strapped to his chest, law enforcement officials said.

Dzhokhar -- the brother who was wearing a white hat in the surveillance photos from the marathon -- got away when he drove the SUV through a line of police officers at the end of the street, Kitzenberg said.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that blood found at the scene suggested Dzhokhar may have been wounded in the gun battle.

During the lockdown, subways and buses were shut down, Amtrak service to Boston was cut, and college campuses were closed. The Red Sox and Boston Bruins' home games were canceled.

Watertown was the epicenter of the search. Frightened residents were trapped inside as convoys of heavily armed officers and troops arrived by the hour and snipers perched on rooftops and in backyards.

When police finally gave residents the OK to venture outside, some cheered as they stepped outside, only to be swept back inside when shots rang out, and police converged on Tsarnaev's hideout.

An administration official said Tsarnaev was not read his Miranda rights and could be questioned without them for up to 48 hours under a special legal exception used in cases where public safety is at stake.

In a statement late Friday, The FBI said they interviewed Tamerlan in early 2011, following a tip from "a foreign government" that he was "a follower of radical Islam" and was preparing to leave the United States to join underground organizations.

The FBI said its interview two years ago of Tsarnaev and his family, along with checks of travel records, Internet activity and personal associations, "did not find any terrorism activity" at the time.

NBC News' Jonathan Dienst and Kasie Hunt contributed to this story.

Slideshow: Search for suspects in Boston Marathon bombings

Dominic Chavez / EPA

A tense night of police activity that left a university officer dead on campus just days after the Boston Marathon bombings and amid a hunt for two suspects caused officers to converge on a neighborhood outside Boston, where residents heard gunfire and explosions.

Launch slideshow

Related:

Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

 Chechen insurgents deny any link to marathon bombing

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect

Missing student's family staggered by false accusation

This story was originally published on Sat Apr 20, 2013 12:35 AM EDT

@nbcnews/Instagram

Reactions pour in on social media after Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is taken into custody following a frantic search that put Boston on lockdown. 

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 9:14 PM EDT

The militant group responsible for the Chechen insurgency cast doubt Friday on allegations that the two known suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing – who are of Chechen origin – carried out the attacks.
 
The official media arm of the Chechen mujahedeen, the Kavkaz Center, published a blog post that suggested the investigation into Monday’s deadly attack is part of an anti-Chechnya “PR campaign.”  

The Kavkaz Center mocked the "lightning speed" at which the two known suspects in the attack on the Boston Marathon – Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was at large on Friday,  and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with law enforcement – were identified. The group called the investigation "completely muddled.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Chechen fighters have waged a violent struggle against the Kremlin, leading to two bloody wars and the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

In a translation of the blog provided by Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News security analyst, the Chechens questioned the logic that the Tsarnaev brothers could be terrorists because their actions seemed so ham-handed. 

“The news that the brothers attacked police officers, carjacked a man and did an array of other things, instead of going into hiding, looks strange at the very least,” the article said.

The blog also argued that the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was “very far from your typical ‘Islamic terrorist.’ He named career and money as his main credo. What's more, he just logged onto his Russian social networking site a few hours ago.”

Chechen insurgents have claimed responsibility for a series of dramatic kidnappings and attacks, including on a hospital in southern Russia, a Moscow theater in 2002 (where all 40 insurgents and 130 out of some 800 hostages were killed by noxious gas pumped into the theater by Russian commandos), and a school in Beslan, Russia (where over 380 people, including several hundred children died in what critics called a heavy-handed “rescue attempt” by Russian police). 

If a connection between the marathon bombing suspects and Chechen separatists was established, it would mark the first time militants from the former Soviet republic have launched a deadly attack outside Russia.

The insurgency’s blog concluded that the campaign to implicate a Chechen connection was likely orchestrated by Russia’s President Vladamir Putin ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Russian Black Sea resort which is located only a few hundred miles from the border with Chechnya.

Putin has long justified repression in the region as attacks on so-called “separatists” and “terrorists.”

The blog also noted that the spokesperson for Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and a former rebel, wasn’t even taking phone calls because he didn’t want to talk about the events in Boston.

In a passionate interview with reporters Friday, the brothers’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, also vehemently denied that there was any connection to the Chechen insurgency.

“This has nothing to do with Chechnya. Chechens are peaceful people,” he said.  

Tsarni insisted that the young men’s actions were apolitical and offered his own explanation for them. “Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves, these are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam – it’s a fraud, it’s a fake.” 

NBC News’ Jim Maceda and Petra Cahill contributed to this article.

Related links:

Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombersWho are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

What motivated bombing suspects? ‘Being losers,’ uncle says

An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect 

The Boston Marathon bombing suspects may have been motivated by shame and hatred, their uncle said Friday at a raw, impromptu press conference.

“Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves; these are the only reasons I can imagine of. Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam – it’s a fraud, it’s a fake," Ruslan Tsarni said outside his home in Montomery Village, Md.

Tsarni expressed outrage over the alleged actions of his nephews Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who was at large on Friday – spawning a massive manhunt – and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a firefight with law enforcement.

“They have brought shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity,” Tsarni said of the two young men suspected of carrying out the attack that left three dead and more than 170 injured

Explaining that he had been estranged from his brother and that he had not seen him or his children in years, Tsarni insisted that his nephew's actions had nothing to do Chechnya, and he was visibly angry that the public was drawing that conclusion.

“This has nothing to do with Chechnya. Chechens are peaceful people,” he said.  

He said that if the young men had become radicalized, it would not have been by his brother, who he said “spent his life bringing bread to their table, fixing cars."

Tsarni, who was visibly shaken, said his nephews had also shamed their family.

“Of course we’re ashamed!” he responded to a reporter’s questioning. “They are children of my brother – who had little influence over them.”

When a reporter asked Tsari about his own feelings towards the United States, he passionately described his love for his adopted country.

“I say, I teach my children and that’s what I feel myself: This is the ideal micro-world in the entire world. I respect this country. I love this country. This country – which gives chance to everybody else to be treated as a human being.”

Asked what he would say to the younger of the two brothers, Dzhokhar, who was still on the loose, he urged him to turn himself in. 

“I say, 'Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in. And ask for forgiveness from the victims, from the injured, and from those who left. Ask for forgiveness from these people.'”

Related links:

Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombers 

Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect 

Courtesy of the Tripathi family

Sunil Tripathi and his mother, Judy Tripathi.

The family of missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi, whose name was repeatedly blasted across social media as a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, said it has been emotionally staggered by the erroneous reports.

His sister, Sangeeta Tripathi, said the family was forced to temporarily freeze its "Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi" Facebook page after that site — beginning Thursday evening — was peppered with a flurry of harsh and untrue posts about the student, who has been missing without a trace since March 16. The family is eagerly awaiting official word from law enforcement clearing Tripathi.

NBC News, via correspondent Pete Williams, reported on Twitter shortly after 2 a.m. Friday: "Speculation that one of the bombing suspects is a missing student is not correct," citing law enforcement sources. 

"It seems this is just the ugly underbelly of viral social media," Sangeeta Tripathi said. "But a lot of stir can be created through just a complete accusatory and unsubstantiated effort." 

"It’s had a huge cost on our family. We are all very depleted right now, just baseline over the past 34 days, and this has been very, very difficult," she added. "Without Sunil in our life, it's been very hard to have that publicity. 

"We are absolutely convinced, with no question at all, it’s not Sunil. We are eagerly awaiting formal public news to calm the pain on my family. We have not received a public apology at all. The FBI is incredibly busy as you can imagine in the investigation. The second law enforcement releases complete information on the suspects, it’s going up on our Facebook page." 

Twitter was ablaze overnight with tweets from users who said they'd heard Sunil Tripathi's name mentioned on Boston police radio frequencies in connection to the bombing investigation and during the massive manhunt that quickly unfolded Thursday night. The Tripathi family said it has no information corroborating that Boston police mentioned Tripathi's name. 

'Intense and ugly comments'
On Twitter, ‏‪@YourAnonNews tweeted overnight: "Police on scanner identify the names of ‪#BostonMarathon suspects in gunfight, Suspect 1: Mike Mulugeta. Suspect 2: Sunil Tripathi." That was retweeted more than 3,000 times. On the twitter account for "Kevin Michael TV," which lists him as "behind the camera at WFSB news Channel 3 Eyewitness News" in Hartford, Conn., a similar tweet came at roughly the same time: "BPD scanner has identified the names : Suspect 1: Mike Mulugeta Suspect 2: Sunil Tripathi."

As with Tripathi, no one named Mulugeta has been named as a suspect by the police. 

Meanwhile, the social news and entertainment website Reddit became overnight, Sangeeta Tripathi said, "one of the more ugly and disgusting places that had a lot of traffic ... There were very intense and ugly comments throughout the last 12 hours. A moderator posted an acknowledgement that without formal evidence, accusations should stop."

On Friday afternoon, the Tripathi family received an email from Erik Martin, the general manager of Reddit, “to apologize personally and on behalf of all our employees for … some of the people on our site's role in the spreading of this false idea about Sunny.” The Tripathi family immediately forwarded that email to NBC News.

“It's an extreme situation and we are deeply sorry that your family got caught up in it,” Martin wrote in the email. “I can't imagine what it must be like for your family to deal with this on top of what you must already be going through.”

The Tripathi family's Facebook page, set up to help locate Sunil and, until Thursday, filled with messages of hope and pictures of the student, began being hit with posts Thursday evening "from individuals who for whatever reason were making the association between what happened (at the Boston Marathon) and him, Sangeeta Tripathi said. 

The Tripathi siblings — there are three, with Sangeeta being the oldest and Sunil the youngest — grew up outside Philadelphia, Sangeeta said. The family has been huddled in Providence, R.I., home of Brown University, since Sunil disappeared last month. His nickname is "Sunny." 

Asked if the viral nature of the misinformation was racially fueled, she responded: "I’m not going to comment on that."

The spread of false rumors online is nothing new, but the combination of confusion and breaking news can create a particularly toxic situation.

In the immediate aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, when local officials incorrectly identified the shooter as Ryan Lanza, thousands of Twitter and Facebook users swarmed to repeat the accusations. Meanwhile, after the theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., Facebook users who shared the suspect's name, James Holmes, found dozens of false accusations left on the pages.

Related links:

• Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombers
• Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing?
• An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  
• What we know: Timeline of terror hunt
• ‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT
• Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon
• Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening
• Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 
• Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect

Jason Reed / Reuters

Senator Chuck Schumer, part of the U.S. Senate's "Gang on Eight", speaks during a news briefing on Capitol Hill, April 18, 2013.

The Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt for suspects has already become part of the debate over immigration reform in Washington, with one high ranking Republican questioning the screening process that allows immigrants into the United States.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hear testimony from Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on the bipartisan immigration overhaul introduced by a group of eight senators, but she had to postpone due to ongoing developments in the search.

A ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said at the outset of the committee’s hearing, “Given the events of this week, it’s important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system. While we don’t yet know the immigration status of the people who have terrorized the communities in Massachusetts, when we find out it will help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.” 

Grassley asked, “How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil? How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the United States? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?”

But a few minutes later, Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N.Y. the chief sponsor of the bipartisan immigration overhaul, in an apparent response to Grassley, said one shouldn’t jump to conclusions about the events in Boston “or try to conflate those events with this legislation. In general, we’re a safer country when law enforcement knows who is here – has their fingerprints, photos, et cetera – has conducted background checks and no longer needs to look at needles in haystacks. In addition, both the refugee program and the asylum program have been significantly strengthened in the past five years such that we are much more careful about screening people and determining who should and should not be coming into the country. If there are any changes our homeland security experts tell us need to be made (in his bill), I’m committed to making them….”

In a statement Friday, Frank Sharry, head of America’s Voice Education Fund and a veteran campaigner for an immigration overhaul which would allow a path to legal residence for some of those in the country illegally, said, "It’s premature to jump to final conclusions about the attackers. And it’s shameful that some on the far right are politicizing and demagoguing this issue.” Sharry said some -- whom he did not identify -- are "exploiting this tragedy in hopes of derailing immigration reform."

The Senate will likely debate the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” immigration overhaul next month, but Grassley stressed that the bill ought to be fully debated in committee and open to amendments on the Senate floor.

Referring to the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli immigration overhaul which was supposed to end illegal immigration and prevent any future amnesty, Grassley said, “We screwed up – and we can’t afford to screw up again.”

The committee was hearing Friday from two witnesses, conservative attorney Peter Kirsanow – who indicated his opposition to the bipartisan bill because he said it would lower wages for U.S. low-skill workers -- and former director of Congressional Budget Office Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who supported the bill.

Related links:

Suspects to carjack victim: We are the bombers 

Who are the brothers accused of the Boston Marathon bombing? 

An empty metropolis: Photos show deserted streets of Boston  

What we know: Timeline of terror hunt

‘Dedicated officer’ gunned down by Boston Marathon suspects at MIT

Slideshow: Bombings at Boston Marathon

Boston bombing spurs Senate debate on tighter immigration screening 

Photos from Bostonians locked down amid terror hunt 

Tweeting police chatter creates confusion over Boston suspect

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 11:47 AM EDT

Cumberland County Sheriff's Office

This undated photo released by the Cumberland County, Maine, Sheriff's Office shows Gary Irving, who was convicted of rape in Massachusetts and who had been on the run for 35 years.

A 34-year search for one of Massachusetts' most wanted fugitives came to an end Wednesday when police arrested a convicted rapist who fled to Maine after facing a possible life sentence. 

Police from Massachusetts and Maine teamed up to find 52-year-old Gary Allen Irving at his home in Gorham, Maine, where he had been living since 2002. Authorities believe that for decades he had been in the area, making a life for himself and keeping a low profile.

In 1978, Irving was convicted of three counts of rape in Norfolk County, Mass. But when a judge granted him a short stay to get his affairs in order before his sentencing, he took off.

Massachusetts State Police say Irving had changed his name to Gregg Irving and changed his date of birth to throw police off his scent. Authorities would not say what evidence led them to Irving, only that information developed in recent days.

State police from Massachusetts and Maine, along with local police and the FBI, also found numerous handguns and rifles — which Irving faces federal charges for illegally owning.

Police told NBC affiliate WCSH that Irving was found in the home with his wife, who was in shock during the arrest. Neighbors described him as pleasant and a normal resident.

Though he bore little resemblance to his mug shot photo snapped more than 30 years earlier, scars on Irving's chest and back helped police identify the fugitive, officials said. 

Irving was found guilty of multiple rapes during the 1970s and convicted of rape with force, kidnapping and unnatural acts. 

In one instance he was accused of knocking a victim off her bike and forcing her to a secluded area, where he repeatedly raped her, according to Massachusetts State Police.

In another, he forced a woman walking alone into his car and threatened her with a knife if she resisted.

Irving is being held in Portland, Maine, and will appear in the Cumberland County Courthouse on Friday.