(Reuters) – They dressed like typical American teenagers, enjoyed playing sports, were friendly and strived to fit in after arriving in the United States with their family from the southern Russian province of Dagestan a decade ago.
The schoolmates, teachers and neighbors of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev said they saw little sign of radicalism – or anything extraordinary – to explain why the ethnic Chechen brothers would allegedly carry out the twin bombings that killed three people and wounded 176 at the Boston Marathon on Monday.
Tamerlan, 26, who dreamed of Olympic boxing glory and appeared to have become a more observant Muslim in recent years, was killed in a shootout with police late on Thursday. Dzhokhar, 19, who was a high school wrestler, is the target of a manhunt that virtually closed down Boston yesteriday.
Much is still unknown about the pair, who lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Four U.S. government officials said they were unaware of any information in government databases that would have, before this week, flagged the Tsarnaev brothers as militants who might become involved in violent attacks.
More than anything, Dzhokhar wanted to be popular, according to those who knew him. He laughed at everyone’s jokes. He tried hard to get along with everybody. He used the word “dude.” He liked hip hop. He was cheery, nervous and socially awkward – but not in a way that made people uncomfortable. And he didn’t talk about politics much.
“Seriously, he was so, so normal, no accent, an all-American kid in every measurable sense of the word,” said Nate Mann, 20, who was in the class above the younger Tsarnaev at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School.
The older brother, who was known as Timmy, appeared to be less social. “I don’t have a single American friend,” Tamerlan was quoted as saying in a 2010 profile in “The Comment” magazine, published by Boston University’s School of Communica-tions. “I don’t understand them.”
