Despite fears that he was heavily armed, multiple federal law-enforcement officials say that the younger of the two Boston bombing suspects, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was not armed when police fired at him in the boat where he was hiding. According to The Washington Post, the FBI has declined to discuss what triggered the gunfire, but other authorities say the shooting may have been caused by the “chaos of the moment” and activity in the boat that may have led police to believe that Tsarnaev had fired a gun or was about to denotate an explosive. “Hours earlier he and his brother had killed a police officer, shot another officer, and thrown explosives out of their cars as the police were chasing them,” one officer told the Post. “They couldn’t assume that he did not have a gun and more explosives.”
