Boston SWAT team: "We wanted to end this"

(CBS News) As the city of Boston and the surrounding suburbs emerged from lockdown Friday night, the search continued for the sole surviving Boston bomber. Four men -- Officers Kenny Tran, Syler Thompson, Jeff Campbell and Detective Brian Harer, of the Transit Police SWAT team -- were called into action. The team heard a radio call of "shots fired" from nearby and headed in the direction of the exchange of gunfire.

At that moment, "We knew we were going into, what I believe was the culmination of the whole week," Campbell told CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.

On "CBS This Morning" Tuesday, the men told Miller that fellow MBTA officer Richard Donahue, who remained hospitalized with critical wounds that night, had been weighing heavily on their minds.

"We're all, to us, we're all family to each other, you know? And, always watching each other's backs is very important," Campbell said.

The SWAT team arrived on the scene in Watertown, Mass., where Dzohkhar Tsarnaev was hiding in a boat and were soon told they would be the arrest team.

"Once that got to the point where they actually had some kind of dialogue with the suspect on the boat, they wanted a plan put in place," Harer explained. "That way if he did decide to turn himself in, we could just get in there and go ahead and make the arrest."

When the arrest team was ordered to move in, Thompson said, "We all jumped in the stack and we started to move up toward the boat after we were given the green light to go."

Jeff Campbell said in that moment, he avoided thinking of colleagues who had been killed or injured by the suspect, in order to maintain focus. "At times like that you can't think about what happened in the past. You know you're going after a dangerous suspect, but you still have to keep you mind in the game."

As they approached the boat, Campbell says he saw "the suspect sitting up on the...gunnel of the boat with one leg hanging over the side."

"His hands were just sort of down by his side. He looked weak. He was shaky, appeared to be losing consciousness, and did have some wounds to his body," Campbell said, adding that the officers then commanded Tsarnaev "to get down off the boat, because we didn't know what he has on the inside of that gunnel where his other hand is. We don't know if he has a weapon or some type of explosive ignition that he could just reach down and hit."

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At that point, Tsarnaev was not responding to the team's commands. "He's just kind of staring at us," Campbell said, "We waited to a point where , as we were getting closer to him and both hands came up, we saw that both hands were open [and] we bolted out in front of the shield at that point. That was the one chance we had and we wanted to end this for everybody."

Despite concerns Tsarnaev may have had other explosive devices in the vicinity of the boat, Tran told Miller that when the team "bolted" out to apprehend the suspect, "Your training kicks in...you can't be scared, you just got to do the task at hand."

Thompson cuffed Tsarnaev with the same handcuffs he carries "all the time." Although Tsarnaev was the most wanted man in America at the time, Thompson said apprehending him was almost routine.

"I just put the cuffs on, brought his hand around. Somebody else holding the other hand. These guy were helping me, along with other people. We cuffed the other hand and we just moved out."

Now, the scene is like a movie in his head, Thompson said. "Just to think about what we did, just the satisfaction of knowing that we could tell Officer Donahue that we got him, which we did...we walked into his room and we told him, 'We got him.' And it does feel good after a while."

Still, the SWAT officers do not consider themselves heroes. "The law enforcement officer, the firefighters, the EMTs and the civilians, the families that were at the bombing on Marathon Day. Everybody in the city acted, I think as one family. They were phenomenal," Campbell said.