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Boston Carjacking Victim Thought He Would Be Killed

Though they told him he wouldn't be hurt, the man who was allegedly forced by the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings to hand over his SUV and go with them says he was convinced the gunmen would "kill me later."

WMUR-TV of Manchester, N.H., has spoken with the victim of the carjacking that police have tied to Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The station did not identify the man "for safety reasons," and posted its report on what he had to say here.

His story tracks with what authorities stated in the criminal complaint filed Monday against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the bombings that killed three people and wounded more than 200. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died Friday after a gun battle with police.

It was Thursday night, in Cambridge, Mass., when the man's vehicle was carjacked. A campus police officer at MIT had been murdered shortly before — another crime that authorities say they have tied to the Tsarnaev brothers.

According to WMUR, "the man said he was in his car on the side of a road about 11 p.m. when a man holding a gun approached his passenger-side window."

The victim told WMUR that the gunman said of the bombings, "I did that." The driver was forced to slide over to the front passenger seat. The gunman drove them to a nearby location where another man was waiting. The two men then put some things in the back of the SUV.

"They asked me where I'm from. I told them I'm Chinese," the victim said to WMUR. "I was very scared. I asked them if they were going to hurt me. They said they won't hurt me. I was thinking, 'I think they will kill me later.' "

At a gas station, the carjacked driver says, he was able to get away. One gunman was pumping the gas. The other went inside to pay. The victim took that opportunity to get out of the car and run.

"The guy outside the car tried to catch me using his hand," the man told WMUR "He tried to catch me, but I ran very fast. ... I'm very lucky."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.