Florida declines to charge FBI agent over Ibragim Todashev shooting death

An FBI agent who shot dead a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev during an interrogation last year acted in self-defence and will not face criminal charges, a Florida prosecutor announced on Tuesday.

The unnamed agent shot Ibragim Todashev seven times as the 27-year-old moved towards a police officer holding a broom stick “in the style of a javelin”, moments after wounding the FBI agent by flipping a coffee table into the back of his head, according to officers who were there.

FBI officials previously claimed in anonymous briefings to reporters after the shooting on May 22 that Todashev had attacked the agent with a knife or length of pipe.

Two Massachusetts State Police (MSP) officers told the prosecutor, Jeffrey Ashton, that when he died, Todashev was about to write a statement admitting to “some involvement” in a triple homicide in September 2011, to which Tsarnaev has also been connected.

Having conducted a review of the killing, Ashton, the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, said in a letter to FBI director James Comey that the agent’s actions were “justified in self-defence and in defence of another” and did not warrant prosecution.

“There is no evidence in this instance that the Special Agent of the FBI committed intentional misconduct or acted with any degree of malice,” said Ashton.

An FBI internal review of the incident had already cleared the agent of wrongdoing.

Ashton said Todashev, who was experienced in mixed martial arts, was “at his core, a fearless fighter” and speculated that he “chose to go down fighting” instead of submitting to arrest.

“Regardless of how beaten down he was, he simply didn’t have any quit in him,” Ashton said.

The MSP officers told Ashton that they and the FBI agent had spent four and a half hours interviewing Todashev, a Chechen immigrant, at his home in Orlando, after the Chechen withdrew from an earlier agreement to be questioned at a “secure location”.

The discussion led the 27-year-old to implicate himself in the September 2011 killings of Brendan Mess, 25, Rafael Teken, 37, and Erik Weissman, 31 the officers said. Federal prosecutors have said separately that he also implicated Tsarnaev, who also knew Mess. The officers told Ashton that Todashev made comments “clearly indicating an expectation of arrest, prosecution and probable incarceration” and agreed to write a statement while sitting at a coffee table.

At this point, the officers said, video and audio recordings of the interview were halted, and one of the MSP officers left the house in order to contact a Massachusetts prosecutor about the confession. Out of concern over abrupt “changes in Mr Todashev’s demeanor”, the officer who stayed inside said he removed a “decorative sword” from the wall and placed it behind a shelf.

Then, according to the officers, Todashev snapped. “The coffee table suddenly [was] propelled into the air striking the Special Agent of the FBI in the back of the head,” Ashton wrote. The agent was said to have been left with blood pouring from a wound. Todashev is alleged to have then run into his kitchen and returned “carrying a long pole of some sort”.

Supporting documents released on Tuesday showed that the pole was described as a “broom stick” in FBI lists of items recovered from the scene by investigators. One FBI account submitted to Ashton described it as a “metal handle of a mop or broom”.

Ashton said that while Todashev was described in reports from the scene as having been “holding the pole above his head ... invoking visions of the pole being held as a club”, an officer “would later clarify” that “the object, while held high, was held more in the style of a javelin”.

Todashev then “advance[d] on the MSP officer”, said Ashton. In a statement published with Ashton’s report, the FBI agent said: “I shouted ‘show me your hands’ ... I continuously yelled for Todashev to show me his hands, but he did not comply.” The agent went on: “There was no doubt in my mind that Todashev intended to kill both of us.”

The agent shot him three or four times with his Glock 23 .40 caliber. Yet Todashev was apparently still able to spring forward towards in what Ashton called a “low angled lunge”, prompting the agent to shoot him three or four more times, including in the head and back.

Ashton said that the officers’ accounts of the incident were consistent with forensic evidence from Todashev’s autopsy and backed up by documentary evidence, including a text message commenting on the apparent change in Todashev’s demeanour that was sent by the officer who stayed inside to his colleague who stepped outside.

Soon after the killing, the FBI said in a statement that the agent had been interviewing Todashev when “a violent confrontation was initiated” by him. “During the confrontation, the individual was killed and the agent sustained non-life threatening injuries,” the statement said.

Reports based on leaks from anonymous officials then claimed variously that Todashev had lunged at the FBI agent with a knife or a length of pipe. Todashev’s father, Abdul-Baki, accused the FBI of executing his son. “I'd only seen and heard things like that in the movies,” he said. “These just aren't FBI agents. They’re bandits.”

He told the Boston Globe on Tuesday that he was “astonished” the FBI agent had been exonerated. “I am very dismayed that they exonerated him,” said Abdul-Baki Todashev. “How they could do this, I don’t know, when it’s so obvious what happened … Even if he had a pole, how could they let this happen? They couldn’t put handcuffs on him?”

The American Civil Liberties Union said Ashton's review of the case left several important issues unresolved, including why the immediate crime scene investigation was conducted by the FBI rather than an impartial local agency. “The central question of whether officers were justified in killing Mr Todashev – why a man wielding a broomstick needed seven bullets put into him – remains frustrating and disappointingly unanswered,” Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died during a violent standoff with police during the week following the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 200 near the finish line. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 20, is awaiting trial for the bombings and faces the death penalty if convicted.