Updated Wednesday4:57 p.m.
An associate of deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and killed in Florida after he attacked an FBI agent who was interviewing him along with other officials, NBC News reported. The 27-year-old man, Ibragim Todashev, and Tsarnaev were both involved in a 2011 triple homicide over a drug deal gone wrong, law enforcement officials confirmed.
Todashev, was being interviewed in Orlando, Fla., as part of the ongoing Boston Marathon bombing investigation, sources told NBC News. He was initially cooperative but then attacked the agent with a knife, sources told NBC News.
Officials said that Todashev had confessed to the murders in Waltham, Massachusetts. The men were involved in a drug rip-off that ended in homicide after realizing that the victims would be able to identify them, NBC News reported.
The FBI said in a Wednesday statement that it was reviewing an Orlando shooting incident in which an agent sustained non-life threatening injuries and another individual was killed.
The “incident” took place in the early morning hours of May 22 after an FBI agent, two Massachusetts State police, and other law enforcement members were interviewing an individual, the statement said. The FBI did not name the individual but confirmed that the person was interviewed in connection with the bombings and that this person initiated the “violent confrontation,” during the interview.
NBC News Florida affiliate WESH Orlando spoke to a second friend who said he was also interviewed by the FBI with Todashev.
Khusn Taramiv told WESH that he and Todashev were interviewed for three hours together but then the FBI continued on to interview his friend alone. “He felt inside he was going to get shot,” Taramiv said about Todashev. “I told him, ‘Everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘I have a really bad feeling.’” The twin bombs that exploded April 15 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three individuals and injured hundreds more. One suspect in the attack, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed during a shootout with police later that week; his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged with using a weapon of mass destruction and is in custody. Reporting contributed by NBC News’ Richard Esposito and Pete Williams
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