N.Y. TIMES
One lingering mystery in the investigation of the
Boston Marathon bombings is whether the dead suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, played
a role in the unsolved murders of three men, one of them his best friend, in a
Boston suburb in 2011.
That question deepened early Wednesday when a man in
Orlando, Fla., who was being interviewed by at least one F.B.I. agent and other
investigators, implicated himself and Mr. Tsarnaev in those murders, and then
was fatally shot after he apparently tried to assault the agent, two senior law
enforcement officials said.
The man, Ibragim Todashev, had been speaking for two
hours in his apartment to officials from the Massachusetts State Police and the
F.B.I. about Mr. Tsarnaev and the Sept. 11, 2011, murders in Waltham, Mass.,
when he suddenly grabbed an object and tried to attack the agent, one official
said.
“He exploded and leapt at him,” said the official, who
said the F.B.I. agent sustained minor injuries that required stitches. A second law enforcement official said the shooting occurred after Mr. Todashev had admitted his role in the killings and had also implicated Mr. Tsarnaev. The official said he had begun writing out a statement when he asked to take a break.
“They got him to confess to the homicides, and they
say, ‘Let’s write it down,’ and he starts writing it down. He goes to get a
cigarette or something and then he goes off the deep end,” the second official
said. “I don’t know what triggered him, and he goes after the agent.”
The official said Mr. Todashev had something in his
hand, “a knife or a pipe or something.”