Details emerge on Boston suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – USA Today

As the manhunt continues for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, police have identified his brother, Tamerlan, 26, as the other bombing suspect, killed during the manhunt at MIT.

Boston and its suburbs were in lockdown Friday morning as a massive manhunt intensified for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, the surviving Boston bomb suspect.

Tsarnaev was a wrestler at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mass. He was named a Greater Boston League Winter All Star in 2011.

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s phone calls. Many Boston-area schools were closed Friday.

Larry Aaronson, is a retired history teacher at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where Dzhokhar graduated in 2011. Aaronson got to know Dzhokhar while taking photos of the high school wrestling team and other school activities.

“It’s completely out of his character,” Aaronson said of Dzhokhar’s alleged role in the bombings. “Everything about him was wonderful. He was completely outgoing, very engaged, he loved the school. He was grateful not to be in Chechnya.”

Dzhokhar was not overtly political or religious, Aaronson says. “He spoke and acted like any other high school kid.”

Aaronson says he can’t reconcile the young man he knows with the characterizations he’s seeing in the media. “I cannot do it,” he says. “I mean this from the deepest part of my heart: It’s not possible it’s the same person. It’s just not possible.”

Jacob Colbath-Hess, a freshman at Harvard University, was a member of the class of 2012 at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School but first met Tsarnaev in middle school.

“I don’t really know how to react to this….he was a funny, sweet, goofy kid,” said Colbath-Hess. “It’s not something you would expect from someone you know.”

Police have identified Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, as the other bombing suspect, killed during the manhunt at MIT.

The brothers had been living together on Norfolk Street in Cambridge. An uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., told the Associated Press that the men lived together near Boston and have been in the United States for about a decade. They came from the Russian region near Chechnya, which has been plagued by an Islamic insurgency stemming from separatist wars.

Dzhokhar was a wrestler at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in Cambridge, Mass. He was named a Greater Boston League Winter All Star in 2011.

Cambridge Rindge and Latin School did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s phone calls. Many Boston-area schools were closed Friday.

FULL COVERAGE: Tragedy in Boston

MORE: Updates on the manhunt

In May of 2011, as a high school senior, Dzhokhar was awarded a $2,500 City Scholarship from the City of Cambridge to pursue higher education.

Before moving to the United States, he attended School No. 1 in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia’s North Caucasus that has become an epicenter of the Islamic insurgency that spilled over from Chechnya.

His profile on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte says he lists his languages as English, Russian and Nohchiyn Mott (a Chechen language). His worldview is described as “Islam” and he says his personal goal is “career and money.”

A “joke” posted on the profile page, translated from Russian, says: “There is a car… in the car sits a Dagestani, a Chechen and an Ingush. Question – who is driving? The answer: – The Police.”

Taylor Richard, center, of Belmont, Mass., and Alyssa Kohler, 17, of Cambridge, Mass., wrap themselves in the American Flag in Watertown, Mass., Friday. 
Craig Ruttle, AP

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This is an old joke that has been told with a myriad of ethnic “passengers,” meant to imply that if a certain ethnic person is in the car, the only reason would be because they had been arrested, says Andrea McCarren of WUSA-TV in Washington, D.C., who had the posts translated.

The father of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing claims that his son who is still on the loose is a smart and accomplished young man.

Anzor Tsarnaev spoke with the Associated Press by telephone from the Russian city of Makhachkala on Friday after police said one of his sons, Tamerlan, had been killed in a shootout and the other, Dzhokhar, was being intensely pursued.

“My son is a true angel,” the elder Tsarnaev said. “Dzhokhar is a second-year medical student in the U.S. He is such an intelligent boy. We expected him to come on holidays here.”

Contributing: Ishani Premaratne, Kevin Johnson, Judy Keen and The Associated Press