Community Corner

Suspects in Boston Marathon Bombings Have Maryland Ties

Montgomery County community where the suspects' uncles live besieged by media.

 

The investigation into the Boston Marathon bomber case turned to Maryland on Friday with media flocking to a Montgomery County neighborhood to hear the suspects' uncle plea for his surviving nephew to surrender.

Some 12 hours later, police captured Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev hiding wounded in a boat at a house in Watertown, MA.

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Speaking to reporters outside his home in Montgomery Village, a planned community near Gaithersburg, Ruslan Tsarni said he wanted to directly address his 19-year-old nephew who was the focus of a manhunt that locked-down Boston and its suburbs Friday.

 Tsarni said, flanked by cameras and reporters in front of his home in a quiet suburban Washington, DC, neighborhood.

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Tsarni said his wife noticed pictures disseminated by the FBI Thursday night. He was brought into the investigation Friday morning after being contacted by reporters.

Earlier, Tsarni told CBS News that his nephews "do not deserve to live on this earth."

Click the videos above for clips of Tsarni’s news conference.

The bombing suspects' ties to Maryland extend to a handful of relatives living and studying in the Washington metropolitan area.

Another uncle of the suspects, who also lives in Montgomery Village, said he received a call Thursday from Tamerlan Tsarnaev—the 26-year-old man identified by police as the suspect who was later killed, USA Today reported.

"He said, 'I love you and forgive me,'" Alvi Tsarni said, according to the report.

Alvi Tsarni said he had not spoken with Tsarnaev in more than two years, the report said.

"Of course we’re ashamed,” Ruslan Tsarni said. “They're children of my brother, who had little influence of them."

Alvi Tsarni predicted the manhunt would not end well for his nephew.

“They will kill him,” he said of the police. “We know it. ... You don’t have to worry about it. What’s done is done. He’s already dead.”

For the latest on the story from Massachusetts, go to Watertown Patch.

Editor's Note: This article has been corrected. It previously incorrectly attributed a quote to Alvi Tsarni.

Patch editor Tiffany Arnold and Capital News Service contributed to this report. 

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