Boston Bomb Suspects’ Sister Holed Up in N.J. Home

A sister of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was holed up in her northern New Jersey home as she worked through her grief and considered addressing the allegations against her brothers.

Police continued to stand guard at the West New York apartment building where Ailina Tsarnaeva lives with her husband and baby, and authorities say officers will remain at the site indefinitely for her protection.

West New York Police Director Michael Indri spoke briefly with Tsarnaeva inside her apartment Saturday. Upon leaving the three-story building, he told reporters she was grieving and appeared to have been crying.

“She’s grieving, grieving, grieving for her family and for this whole horrific ordeal, for the people as well,” Indri said.

“The main concern was to confirm that there was no contact made one way or the other, and I’m confident that the FBI has confirmed that,” he said.

Tsarnaeva told federal agents on Friday she had not been in contact with her brothers for years. They removed a computer, electronics and other items from the apartment.

Her brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a shootout with police outside Boston. Her younger brother, Dzhokhar, was taken into custody Friday evening after a manhunt that left the Boston metropolitan area nearly paralyzed.

On Friday, she spoke through a barely open door to News12 New Jersey and The Star-Ledger, telling them she was sorry for the families that lost loved ones “the same way I lost my loved one.”

“He was a great person,” the woman said of her dead brother. “I thought I knew him. I never would have expected that from him. He is a kind and loving man. The cops took his life away just the same way he took others’ lives away, if that’s even true. At the end of the day, no one knows the truth.”

But a woman who described herself as a friend of Ailina described a different relationship between the woman and the elder brother.

Vicki Colon, of Passaic, said the woman feared him because “he used to beat her.”

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the April 22nd, 2013 edition of Hamodia.