The FBI said early Wednesday that it was reviewing a fatal shooting incident in Orlando, Florida in which an individual being questioned by law enforcement in connection with the Boston bombings and an unsolved 2011 triple homicide had engaged in a “violent confrontation” with law enforcement personnel.
Just prior to being killed, the man, identified as Ibragim Todashev, reportedly confessed to involvement in the 2011 slayings of three men in Waltham, Massachusetts, one of whom had been a friend of deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. CBS News is reporting that Todashev also implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in those slayings.
It all began Wednesday morning with the following press release from the FBI:
The FBI is currently reviewing a shooting incident involving an FBI special agent. Based on preliminary information, the incident occurred in Orlando, Florida during the early morning hours of May 22, 2013. The agent, two Massachusetts State Police troopers, and other law enforcement personnel were interviewing an individual in connection with the Boston Marathon bombing investigation when a violent confrontation was initiated by the individual. During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries. As this incident is under review, we have no further details at this time.
As more details emerged throughout the day, it was revealed that Todashev was a Chechen who resided in Boston at the time of the 2011 killings. He was said to have been an acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and of the victims of the 2011 killings.
From CBS News:
Todashev lived in the Boston area at the time of the killings and was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with authorities in the days after the April 15 marathon attack. It’s unclear what kind of a relationship Todashev had with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who remains in federal custody awaiting trial.
Earlier, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reported that Todashev was a mixed-martial-arts fighter. Fighting was at least one interest that Todashev shared with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was once a boxer.
Miller also reported that Todashev had been to Chechnya before and was scheduled to return to Chechnya this week but canceled his flight.
The slayings in Waltham had been the subject of renewed interest after the Boston bombings. New questions emerged after it was discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been friends with one of the slain victims, Brendan Mess, and had reportedly been “acting strangely” after the incident at the time. The victims, two of whom were Jewish, were murdered on September 11, 2011. Once Tsarnaev was identified as one of the suspects in the bombings, investigators began reconsidering the possibility of his involvement in the 2011 murders.
A Waltham investigator who called the murders “the worst bloodbath I have ever seen in a long law enforcement career” said Tsarnaev has now proven he had the propensity for the type of violence that unfolded two years ago.
“There was no forced entry, it was clear that the victims had let the killer in. And their throats were slashed right out of an al Qaeda training video. The drugs and money on the bodies was very strange,” the investigator said.
Wednesday’s shooting occurred as agents were questioning Todashev at his apartment in Orlando, Florida. Authorities are awaiting further details as they gather additional facts pertaining to the incident, according to an Orlando-area FBI spokesman.
CNN reported some of the available details on the status of the investigation:
Ibragim Todashev attacked the FBI agent who shot him after he had confessed to a direct role in the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, a federal law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case told CNN on Wednesday. Investigators are awaiting test results to determine whether Todashev’s DNA was found at the Massachusetts triple murder scene and whether DNA of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev — an acquaintance of Todashev — also was found there.
Law enforcement personnel had apparently been investigating Todashev for about a month, according to CNN.
Officials say Todashev was “about to sign a statement” confessing to his and Tsarnaev’s alleged roles in the 2011 slayings before he was shot.
At this time, sources said “authorities have no evidence tying Todashev to last month’s deadly terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon that the Tsarnaev brothers are accused of carrying out,” according to CBS News.
More to follow.
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Comments
The dailymail.co.uk has been all over a Tsarnaev perp for these murders for months. Seems correct.
Yes . They also had the first photos of Tsarnaev getting in the boat. Some ole style shoe leather going on .
I knew Ihad read this but the DM kept at it . It has to do with its rolling style tabloid – stories. Do no disappear – they just get added to .
Very strange. A suspect being questioned would already have been searched and disarmed. There would be multiple law enforcement personnel present. Glad a murderer is dead, but otherwise not sure how to take this. What information are we now not going to get.
For what it’s worth, the guy was a Mixed Martial Arts Fighter who recently hospitalized someone he picked a fight with in a parking lot. He probably was unarmed, but even unarmed if he jumped the officer and started grappling the officer most likely would know his history and not hesitate to use deadly force.
Obama’s IRS and FBI and CIA are not America’s agencies.
Offing the FL perpetrator would have been expedient if he could tie the Tsarnaevs to Al Harbi, the Obama’s little darling Saudi, who was arrested first in the Boston Marathon cold blooded murderous Islamic jihad attack.
(Calling their abhorrent dastardliness what it is).
If he could implicate Al Harbi, the Saudis would pay Obama a tidy sum to ‘clean things up’.
No doubt, Al Harbi will soon re-enter the US (privileged status) to resume his own terrorist skullduggerist endeavors while the FBI, HS, et al twiddle their thumbs.
Cleaning up potential loose ends. How convenient that dead men tell no tales. It will be interesting to see how many more people who knew the brothers wind up dead.
Investigators are awaiting test results to determine whether … DNA of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev also was found there.
PCR takes under an hour now. For the FBI, it takes a month? More gov’t transparency.
The guy was a mixed martial arts fighter, so could have been very dangerous, even without a weapon. Of course this calls into question again the competence of our local police here in MA. Tsarnaev should have been an obvious suspect at the time of the murders in 2011. Think of the lives that could have been spared and the horror that could have been avoided if they had nailed Tsarnaev and put him away permanently back then. Not to mention the fact that they missed Dzhokhar, hiding out in that boat for a whole day when he had made it only 400 yards from where he abandoned the car, because they forgot to search the street he was on. Living in the “lockdown” area, I must say that the idea that the entire city of Boston and so many surrounding towns were paralyzed by a single 19 year old fugitive was truly surreal. On the bright side, my kids and I took the opportunity to give our two dogs a much needed bath.
how convenient for them… no witnesses, no evidence, no loose ends.
i’m throwing the BS flag: the Federal Bureau of Incompetence is dancing to it’s master’s beat.
this whole story line is a combo of Kafka and Solzhenitsyn, with some Hunter Thompson & Kurt Vonnegut thrown in.
the lying ba5tards are lying.
I don’t know, call me crazy, but I call BS.
Are you telling me the fbi is so damn inept they don’t frisk a suspected terrorist/murderer before questioning?
Sounds fishy to me. I was going to say very Clintonian, but Obama has a lot of mysterious deaths in his background as well. Things that used to be in tin-foil hat territory, alas, sound all to likely.
I’m a retired Peace Officer. For a whole bunch of reasons, this is hinky. From other reports, Todashev was armed with a knife, and the FBI agent suffered superficial wounds. That leaves the matter of the search mentioned by janitor. From a statement by another Chechen who was questioned and released, Todashev was taken away for a second time. Which means they removed him, to a secure interrogation environment. Which means he would have been searched.
For an FBI agent to shoot him raises questions that become more urgent given the events of the last few weeks and months.
1) the administration has banked everything on claiming that there is no Islamic terrorist conspiracy; and that we have been hit by a succession of “lone wolves”.
2) the administration has openly and blatantly ignored the law and the Constitution to attack those it considers to be its cultural and political enemies.
3) the word of this administration is worthless.
4) Federal law enforcement/Homeland Security is now more concerned with political intimidation and performing the will of the administration than with the law or the Constitution.
5) It should cross the mind of any investigator, “What, exactly, did Todashev know that if released that would harm the administration?”. Followed by, “Was the FBI agent under orders to make sure that it was not released?”.
It could be that events transpired as stated. But in today’s America, it is just as possible to be a very convenient death.
Subotai Bahadur
Honk! Honk!
Your post wasn’t up yet when I posted below, but this thing smelled fishy to me too. Something isn’t right with the initial accounts.
I’m having a bit of trouble believing that the FBI was interviewing a man they knew was a martial artist and a suspected terrorist and/or triple murderer, but they apparently neither frisked him for weapons nor handcuffed him. It raises the ‘incompetent or something worse?’ specter so familiar from the IRS and Benghazi scandals.
Was there a non-FBI witness? Did they record the interview?
Wild-Ass Conspiracy Theory: Did our FBI just essentially execute a man to shut him up about something Boston bombing-related?