Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a participant in the Boston Globe’s co-op program who knows the Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, said he couldn’t fathom that his friend was the subject of a massive manhunt.
Kanno-Youngs admitted that he saw resemblance to his friend when the FBI released photos and videos of Tsarnaev and his older brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, at a Thursday evening press briefing, but he didn’t connect the dots because it seemed too far-fetched. In fact, Kanno-Youngs said he reached out to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev out of fear that his friend might be falsely accused.
“You have something in the back of your head like, ‘Wow, like, that maybe looks like Dzhokhar,'” Kanno-Youngs said . “And you know, the crazy thing is probably my first reaction is reach out to him. And I did just to say, you know, ‘Yeah, man, be careful because these people might try to think that it’s you.'”
Kanno-Youngs opened up about his relationship with the suspect in a video that had been posted on the Globe’s website before being removed on Friday afternoon. When TPM reached out to a spokesperson for the Globe, she said she hoped the video would be “back up shortly” but did not say why it was removed in the first place. Later in the afternoon, a slightly edited version of the video resurfaced on the Globe’s website. In the edited video, a message appears after Kanno-Youngs discusses his efforts to reach out to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“Globe sports co-op Zolan Kanno-Young tried to contact Dzhokhar Tsarnaev because it never occurred to him that his friend could be the bombing suspect,” the message says. “He worried that Tsarnaev could be mistaken for the second suspect in the white hat — until he realized that it was him.”
This post has been updated.
