William T. Breault, a community activist from Worcester, Massachusetts, has announced the creation of a public fund designed to raise enough money to ship Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s corpse to Kyrgyzstan or Chechyna, Russia, reports the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Breault made his statement this morning from outside the funeral home in Worcester, Massachusetts, where Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s dead body is housed. Breault got the ball rolling by contributing $500 of his own money.
Breault said:
I don’t look at it as I’m helping his family, I look at it as I’m helping the citizens of Boston, Worcester and this state move on from this problem.
It’s estimated the cost of shipping the body will range somewhere between $3,000 and $7,000.
Breault says he’s received about $1,500 in donations so far.
— FOX 25 News Boston (@fox25news) May 6, 2013
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Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed on the night April 19 by gunshots and “blunt force trauma,” according to his death certificate, four days after he and his younger brother, Dzohokhar, planted two bombs that killed three people and injured 260 at the Boston marathon. The younger Tsarnaev remains in a prison hospital at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s uncle Ruslan Tsarni.
Tsarnaev’s body was retrieved by his uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, on Friday, and a brief funeral service was held within Graham Putnum & Mahoney Funeral Parlors over the weekend. But the funeral parlor owner, Peter Stefan, continues to hold the body in a refrigerator despite the protests outside his premises. He is still adamant about finding a proper burial site for Tsarnaev’s body although it’s been reported that his corpse has been rejected by cemeteries in “three different states.” Stefan said:
Is he a terrorist? Sure he is a terrorist, but I can’t control what he did. The person is dead, and burying a dead body, that’s all it is.
Public safety costs to guard Worcester funeral home where Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body is = $27K-$30K at this hour. #wcvb twitter.com/KathyReports/s…
— Kathy Curran (@KathyReports) May 6, 2013