The FBI Changes Its Story (Again) on the Ibragim Todashev Shooting
New anonymous source says Todashev may have injured agent with a table and a metal pole. Or maybe not.
Law enforcement officials are still trying to explain how a supposedly peaceful interview with an important witness in the Boston bombing case turned into a deadly shooting, but as usual, every new attempt to explain the death of Ibragim Todashev only raises more troubling questions. After originally accusing the suspect (and potential murderous accomplice of Boston bomber Tamleran Tsarnaev) of attacking an FBI agent with a knife, and then walking back that claim entirely, an new anonymous source says Todashev may have injured the agent with a table and a metal pole. Or maybe not.
Here's the way the attack was described in The New York Times. Everyone seems to agree that after several hours of interrogation, Todashev was prepared to confess to an unsolved murder that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were connected to. Then things get a lot less clear:
At that moment, Mr. Todashev picked up the table and threw it at the agent, knocking him to the ground. While trying to stand up, the agent, who suffered a wound to his face from the table that required stitches, drew his gun and saw Mr. Todashev running at him with a metal pole, according to the official, adding that it might have been a broomstick.
So not only has the story changed again, it has now changed twice in the same sentence. The weapon has now gone from nothing to a knife, back to nothing to a table to a metal pole to a broomstick. Todashev was also apparently shot more than once, after an initial volley of "several shots" somehow failed to bring him down.