Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have tried to kill himself before he was apprehended on Friday evening. The 19-year-old remains heavily under sedation at a Boston hospital while investigators wait for him to regain consciousness.
The suspect may have tried to commit suicide because of the trajectory and location of the bullet wound in his neck, according to a report.
A source with knowledge of the investigation revealed that the shot was fired at close range , suggesting it may have been self-inflicted. Tsarnaev was found in a boat in a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts, almost a whole day after he and older brother Tamerlan shot and killed a MIT campus police officer.
They led cops on a wild car chase through the sleepy Boston Suburb in the early hours of Friday morning. The Tsarnaev brothers attempted to evade police by firing guns and throwing bombs at them, including a pressure cooker bomb similar to the ones used during Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings.
Tamerlan was killed during a shootout , and his younger brother fled the scene, evading capture until he was discovered inside a boat one block out of the police search perimeter.
Once authorities found him, the 19-year-old stepped out of the boat and engaged in a brief standoff with police that included gunfire and a negotiation with FBI agents. The source added that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was mouthing curse words either at himself or authorities as they loaded him into an ambulance on Friday night.
Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis announced on Sunday that the younger Tsarnaev is in critical but stable condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is reportedly intubated and breathing with the help of a ventilator. It is unclear if authorities will ever be able to question the suspect because of the injury to his throat.
While Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have tried to prevent authorities from finding out the reason for the bombings by attempting suicide, they have not been deterred. A report says that hundreds of FBI agents and other investigators have interviewed more than 100 people who knew the alleged Boston bombers.
They have been looking for any possible links to foreign extremists. They are also trying to understand why the bombings happened and if anyone helped the Tsarnaev brothers with the deadly explosions. Davis stated on Sunday that he believes the brothers were going to attack another scene but that they were acting alone.
While reports say that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev may have tried to kill himself, authorities will never know for sure until he wakes up.