Witness IDs Tsarnaev as man near slain MIT officer’s cruiser

Associated Press

BOSTON

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Wednesday identified Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the man he saw leaning in to the police cruiser of an MIT officer who was fatally shot three days after the bombings.

Nathan Harman, 24, a student working toward a doctorate in mathematics, testified that he was riding his bike through a campus courtyard at 10:20 p.m. April 18, 2013, when he saw a parked MIT police cruiser. Harman said the driver’s-side door was open and there was a man bent at the waist, leaning in to the cruiser.

“He sort of snapped up, stood up and turned around, and he looked startled,” Harman said. “And then I just didn’t think anything of it and rode off.”

When asked by a prosecutor if he saw the person in the courtroom Wednesday, Harman pointed to Tsarnaev. “He’s right there,” he said.

Harman said he assumed Tsarnaev was an MIT student. “I remember thinking he had a big nose, but nothing beyond that really,” he said.

Prosecutors say Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, killed MIT police Officer Sean Collier as he sat in his cruiser that night in a failed attempt to steal his gun. The shooting came hours after the FBI released images of the brothers, identifying them as suspects in the marathon bombings.