Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body was claimed by his family on Thursday after his widow, Katherine Russell, declined to take his remains.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Terrel Harris said a funeral home retained by Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s family picked up the 26-year-old’s remains. He said he had no more information about plans for the remains.
The medical examiner determined Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s cause of death on Monday, but officials said it wouldn’t become public until his remains were released and a death certificate was filed. It was unclear on Thursday evening whether the death certificate had been filed.
Katherine Russell, who has been living with her parents in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, learned this week that the medical examiner was ready to release his body and wanted it released to his side of the family, her attorney Amato DeLuca said days ago.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle Ruslan Tsarni, of Maryland, said Tuesday night the family would take the body.
“Of course, family members will take possession of the body,” Ruslan Tsarni said.
“We’ll do it. We will do it. A family is a family.”
After the hearse believed to be carrying Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body departed Boston, television stations reported that their helicopters followed it to the Dyer Lake Funeral Home in North Attleboro. About 20 protesters gathered outside the funeral home. An Associated Press photographer later saw a hearse leaving the home escorted by two police cars.
Dyer-Lake Funeral Director Tim Nye told The Sun-Chronicle newspaper late Thursday that the body was only brought to his funeral home temporarily and was transported to another facility, but didn’t say where.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who had appeared in surveillance photos wearing a black cap and was identified as Suspect No. 1, died days after the bombing.
Boston Marathon April 15 bombing, using pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails, ball bearings and metal shards near the race’s finish line, killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
Authorities said Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar later killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus police officer and carjacked a driver, who escaped.
Authorities said that during the gunbattle with police, the Tsarnaev brothers, ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the US about a decade ago, set off another pressure cooker bomb and tossed grenades before the older brother ran out of ammunition.
Police said they tackled the older brother and began to handcuff him but had to dive out of the way at the last second when the younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, drove a stolen car at them. They said the younger brother ran over Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body as he drove away from the scene to escape.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured later, wounded and bloody, hiding in a tarp-covered boat in a suburban Boston backyard. He is in a federal prison and faces a charge of using a weapon of mass destruction to kill.
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