WASHINGTON: An immigrant entrepreneur from China came out of the shadows with his harrowing tale of being carjacked at gunpoint by the Tsarnaev brothers after the Boston Marathon attacks.
Identified only as Danny, 26, his story – worthy of a Hollywood thriller -filled in some of the details between the killing of an MIT campus police officer and a nocturnal shootout in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed.
In an exclusive interview, Danny told the Boston Globe newspaper how the elder Tsarnaev, brandishing a handgun, knocked on the window of his Mercedes ML 350 luxury SUV late on the night of April 18.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Tsarnaev, also 26, who then asked Danny if he was keeping up with developments in the double bomb attack at the marathon finish line in which three people were killed and 264 injured.
“I did that,” Tsarnaev told his captive behind the wheel, “and I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
Fearing for his life, Danny drove Tsarnaev through the suburban Boston night, twisting and turning through the dark streets, followed by a sedan driven by younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19.
Danny first came to the United States in 2009 as a graduate student in engineering at Northeastern University, and returned to the Boston area two months ago from China to launch a startup.
In a side street, the two cars stopped. The elder Tsarnaev ordered Danny onto the passenger side. The two brothers then shifted what appeared to Danny to be luggage into the back of the Mercedes.
Off went the brothers and their captive, together in the leased USD 50,000 SUV, with Tamerlan Tsarnaev now driving and Danny thinking up an escape plan.
With the gas tank nearly empty, they returned to the abandoned sedan, from which the brothers took a few more things.
Shortly after, Danny’s iPhone received first a text, then a phone call – a friend asking where he was.
“If you say a single word in Chinese, I will kill you right now,” the older Tsarnaev said.
Danny complied, telling his Mandarin-speaking friend in English: “I’m sleeping at my friend’s home tonight. I have to go.”
Danny’s chance for escape came at a Shell gas station which, at that late hour of night, took cash only.
When the younger Tsarnaev went inside to pay with a USD 50 bank note, and the older one shoved his handgun in a door pocket to fiddle with a GPS device, Danny seized the moment. -AFP
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