Bella Tsarnaeva is known around the world as the sister of alleged Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The bombings killed three people and reportedly injured as many as 281 others.
Bella Tsarnaeva’s Family
The Tsarnaeva family has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Let’s take a look at the family background. The Tsarnaev family was forcibly moved from Chechnya to the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan in the years following World War II. Anzor Tsarnaev is a Chechen, and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is an Avar. Zubeidat met Anzor, while he was serving his mandatory military term in the early 1980s. They married in 1986—a day before their eldest son was born. Their eldest son, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was born in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on October 21, 1986. Their daughters, Bella Tsarnaev and Ailina Tsarnaev were born in 1988 and 1990 respectively. And the youngest son, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born on July 22, 1993.
As children, Tamerlan and his siblings lived in Tokmok, Kyrgyzstan. In 2001, the family moved to Makhachkala, Dagestan, in the Russian Federation. In April 2002, the Tsarnaev family went to the United States on a 90-day tourist visa. Anzor applied for asylum, citing fears of deadly persecution due to his ties to Chechnya. The family “was in constant transition” for the next decade. Anzor worked as a backyard mechanic, and Zubeidat worked as a cosmetologist and both received welfare benefits. In March 2007, the family was granted legal permanent residence.
Bella Tsarnaeva was arrested in December 2012 and charged with drug possession and distribution charges after police responding to a domestic violence incident at her Fairview, N.J., apartment found marijuana there.
Bella Tsarnaeva’s Run-Ins With The Law
It’s been 10 years since the Boston Marathon was struck by tragedy when two pressure-cooker bombs filled with nails and ball bearings went off, killing three people and injuring more than 500. It took local authorities four days to track down Dzhokhar Tsarnaeva and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers responsible. While Tamerlan was killed during a shootout with police, Dzhokhar was eventually taken into custody and later sentenced to death. He is currently on death row. A Netflix documentary, American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombing, revisits the horrible events of that day.
Shortly after the Federal Bureau of Investigation declared the Tsarnaev brothers as suspects in the bombings, the brothers killed an MIT policeman, carjacked an SUV, and engaged in a shootout with the police in the Boston suburb of Watertown. According to the federal indictment, during the shootout, Tamerlan was captured but died, partly as a result of his brother driving over him. A MBTA police officer was critically injured by friendly fire in the course of Dzhokhar’s escape in the SUV. An injured Dzhokhar escaped, but was found, arrested, and hospitalized on the evening of April 19, and was tried and convicted subsequently sentenced to death.
