A friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev implicated himself and the Boston bombing suspect in an unsolved triple homicide before FBI agents killed him in a violent altercation on Wednesday, local media reported.
The FBI said the man initiated a “violent confrontation” during questioning in Orlando, Florida, and was killed, and that an FBI agent suffered “non-life threatening injuries.”
The man, identified by the Orlando Sentinel as Ibragim Todashev, 27, was being questioned by the FBI agent, two Massachusetts state troopers and other law enforcement personnel.
Todashev attacked the FBI agent with a knife just as he was about to sign a confession that he had played a role in the triple murder, local media cited investigators as saying.
The triple murder took place on Sept. 11, 2011 — the 10th anniversary of the deadly attacks on the US — in the Boston suburb of Waltham, local media said.
All three bodies were found nearly decapitated, covered with marijuana and thousands of US dollars in cash.
Local NBC television affiliate WESH said Todashev and Tsarnaev killed Brendan Mess, 25, Raphael Teken, 37, and Eric Weissman, 31, after ripping them off for drugs because they did not want the men to later identify them.
Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar are alleged to have carried out the April 15 bombings at the Boston Marathon, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police after the bombings, while his brother was captured and is in custody.
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