Shot Chechen linked to bombs suspect and earlier triple killing

Ibragim Todashev’s Chechen roots and mixed martial arts background mirror that of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombing suspect killed in a shootout with police last month. The two also had lived in the Boston area.

Todashev, 27, was shot at his Orlando home during a meeting with the agent and two Massachusetts state troopers, authorities said. The agent was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

Law enforcement officials said Todashev had lunged at the agent with a knife. However, two of those officials said later it was no longer clear what had happened.

The FBI gave no details on why it was interested in Todashev except to say that he was being questioned as part of the Boston investigation. However, two officials said he had implicated himself as having been involved in a triple killing in a Boston suburb in 2011 that authorities believe may have been connected to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old killed in a shootout with police days after the April 15 terrorist attack.

Todashev lived in nearby Watertown, Massachusetts last year.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar, survived the shootout with police and is now charged with carrying out the attack that killed three people and wounded more than 260. He is also charged in the murder of an MIT police officer days later.

Several of Todashev’s former roommates who were questioned by the FBI said he knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an aspiring boxer, from mixed martial arts fighting in Boston. “He’s a regular guy, nothing wrong,” Saeed Dunkaev said of Todashev.

Todashev had lived on and off with other Chechens in the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee.

Investigators have been trying to establish the scope of the plot. In addition, authorities in Massachusetts said they would investigate whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev had any connection to the unsolved 2011 deaths in the Boston suburb of Waltham, where three men were found in an apartment, their throats slit and marijuana sprinkled over their bodies. One of the victims was a boxer and a friend of Tsarnaev’s.

Two officials who were briefed on the investigation said Todashev made statements, while he was being interviewed by the FBI and Massachusetts state police, implicating himself as having been involved in the 2011 Waltham killings.

Police records suggest Todashev had a hot temper, with arrests over road rage and a fight over a parking space.

Muslin Chapkhanov, another former roommate, said Todashev knew the older Tsarnaev brother. Todashev “was living in Boston and I think he trained with him,” Chapkhanov said.

Former roommate Khusen Taramov said the FBI was asking questions about a conversation Todashev had with the older bombing suspect a month before the Boston Marathon attack.

The ex-roommate said Todashev told him of his previous conversations with investigators and that he was completely forthcoming.

Taramov said: “He told everything he knew...I don’t know why [the shooting] happened.”

Taramov said Todashev was afraid before yesterday’s interview as well. “That’s what he asked me before he pretty much died,” Taramov said. “He asked me, ‘If something happens can you go out and tell all the truth. What exactly happened.’”

Chechnya has become a recruiting ground for Islamic extremists. Investigators have said the brothers carried out the Boston bombing in retaliation for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.