Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev (born July 22, 1993) is an American domestic terrorist and mass murderer of Chechen and Avar descent. Along with his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he planted pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The bombs detonated, killing three people and injuring hundreds of others.

During his early childhood, Tsarnaev lived in Kyrgyzstan and in the Russian Republic of Dagestan. He moved with his parents to the United States in 2002 and later became a U.S. citizen. Tsarnaev and his family settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2011, he graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and began attending the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He had a brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and has two sisters.

On April 18, 2013, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released images of two men, stated that they were suspects in the bombing, and asked the public for help in identifying them. The images depicted Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Later that evening, the Tsarnaev brothers shot and killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier and then committed a carjacking. During an ensuing shootout with police, both brothers were injured; Tamerlan Tsarnaev died from his injuries. On the evening of April 19, after thousands of police officers conducted a manhunt in Watertown, Massachusetts, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found hiding in a boat in the backyard of a residence. He was shot and taken into custody. During an interrogation, Tsarnaev acknowledged his role in the Boston Marathon bombing and added that he and his brother had also intended to detonate explosives in New York City's Times Square.

Tsarnaev was tried and convicted of 30 counts and was sentenced to death. His death sentence was vacated on appeal in July 2020, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that decision in March 2022. As of 2025, he is being held on death row at ADX Florence federal supermax prison in Colorado.