The FBI agent who shot and killed murder suspect Ibragim Todashev during an interrogation in Florida was cleared of criminal responsibility for the death in a pair of reports on Tuesday. But the reports — one from the DOJ's Civil Rights division, and another from a Florida prosecutor — don't seem to answer all of the questions circulating from the death of Todashev, who faced questioning in connection to an unsolved 2011 triple homicide. Investigators believed that homicide had a connection to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers behind the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings.
The existence of the written confession, it should be noted, is firmly in the "what we know" category about Todashev's death, even before the release of today's reports. We know law enforcement officers went to his Florida home several months after the Boston bombings to question the Chechen about the 2011 triple murder and his relationship to Tsarnaev. After several hours of questioning, we know Todashev was ready to confess. What we didn't know is how the situation changed from Todashev's confessing his crime to his shooting death at the hands of an unnamed FBI agent.
As Todashev began to write a statement detailing his role in the murder, he suddenly struck the FBI Agent with the coffee table he was writing on and ran to the kitchen area. The Agent, who sustained a serious head wound, drew his handgun. Todashev ignored commands to show his hands, armed himself with an approximately five-foot long, hollow, metal utility pole, and charged back toward the Assisting Trooper and the Agent. Other available evidence is consistent with the eye-witness law enforcement officers' accounts that, fearing that Todashev intended to seriously injure or kill someone, the Agent fired two volleys, striking Todashev with seven shots causing Todashev's death.
The Florida prosecutor's report, over 150 pages, contains a lot more detail, including written statements from the FBI agents involved. As the Boston Globe spotted, officers had already seen Todashev's "fighting videos on YouTube" (he was an MMA fighter and "had studied his criminal record." The FBI agent said in the report that "On a scale of one to 10, I believe Todashev was an eight as far as his inclination and ability for physical violence."
The report details Todashev's increasing agitation as he accepts the fact that he'll probably go to jail after confessing to a role in the 2011 triple murder. So, as the Globe asks, why didn't investigators handcuff the suspect, or arrest him on the spot once he confessed? Carol Rose, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts, noted to the paper that "there are many ways that police can take precautions to protect themselves without ending up with a person who is dead." The ACLU continues to call for an independent investigation of the shooting.
The DOJ report is available here. The Florida prosecutor's report is here.