C*****d
发帖数: 2253 | 1 By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff
The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the
curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind
him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached
the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.
The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him,
lowered the window -- and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door,
and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
“Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news
about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of
the grainy suspect photos less than six hours earlier.
“I did that,” said the man, who would later be identified as Tamerlan
Tsarnaev. “And I just killed a policeman in Cambridge.”
He ordered Danny to drive -- right on Fordham Road, right again on
Commonwealth Avenue -- the beginning of an achingly slow odyssey last
Thursday night and Friday morning in which Danny felt the possibility of
death pressing on him like a vise.
In an exclusive interview with the Globe on Thursday, Danny -- the victim of
the Tsarnaev brothers’ much-discussed but previously little-understood
carjacking -- filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline
between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10:30 p.m
. on April 18, and the Watertown shootout that ended just before 1 a.m.
Danny asked that he be identified only by his American nickname.
The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing
action laced with dark humor and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness,
reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits
for students, the marvels of the Mercedes ML 350 and the iPhone 5, whether
anyone still listens to CDs -- all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds
and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.
Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother
following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where
they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out
if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they
asked while silently analyzing every threatened command, every overheard
snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him.
“Death is so close to me,” Danny recalled thinking. His life had until
that moment seemed ascendant, from a province in central China to graduate
school at Northeastern University to a Kendall Square start-up.
“I don’t want to die,” he thought. “I have a lot of dreams that haven’t
come true yet.”
After a zigzagging trek through Brighton, Watertown, and back to Cambridge,
Danny would seize his chance for escape at the Shell Station on Memorial
Drive, his break turning on two words -- “cash only” -- that had rarely
seemed so welcome.
When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food
Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle
with a navigation device -- letting his guard down briefly after a night on
the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash
, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it
behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any
marksman.
“F---!” he heard Tamerlan say, feeling the rush of a near-miss grab at his
back, but the man did not follow. Danny reached the haven of a Mobil
station across the street, seeking cover in the supply room, shouting for
the clerk to call 911.
His quick-thinking escape, authorities say, allowed police to swiftly track
down the Mercedes, abating a possible attack by the brothers on New York
City and precipitating a wild shootout in Watertown that would seriously
wound one officer, kill Tamerlan, and leave a severely injured Dzhokhar
hiding in the neighborhood. He was caught the following night, ending a
harrowing week across Greater Boston.
Danny spoke softly but steadily in a 2 1/2 hour interview at his Cambridge
apartment with a Globe reporter and a Northeastern criminology professor,
James Alan Fox , who had counseled Danny after the former graduate student
approached his engineering adviser at Northeastern.
Danny, who offered his account only on the condition that the Globe not
reveal his Chinese name, said he does not want attention. But he suspects
his full name may come out if and when he testifies against Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev.
“I don’t want to be a famous person talking on the TV,” Danny said,
kneading his hands, uncomfortable with the praise he has received from the
few friends he has shared the story with, some of whom encouraged him to go
public. “I don’t feel like a hero. ... I was trying to save myself.”
Danny, trained as an engineer, made scrupulous mental notes of street signs
and passing details, even as he abided the older Tsarnaev’s command not to
study his face.
“Don’t look at me!” Tamerlan shouted at one point. “Do you remember my
face?”
“No, no, I don’t remember anything,” he said.
Tamerlan laughed. “It’s like white guys, they look at black guys and think
all black guys look the same,” he said. “And maybe you think all white
guys look the same.”
“Exactly,” Danny said, though he thought nothing of the sort. It was one
of many moments in their mental chess match, Danny playing up his outsider
status in America and playing down his wealth -- he claimed the car was
older than it was, and he understated his lease payments -- in a desperate
hope of extending his life.
Danny had come to the US in 2009 for a master’s degree, graduated in
January 2012, and returned to China to await a work visa. He came back two
months ago, leasing a Mercedes and moving into a high-rise with two Chinese
friends while diving into a startup. But he told Tamerlan he was still a
student, and that he had been here barely a year. It seemed to help that
Tamerlan had trouble understanding even Danny’s pronunciation of the word
“China.”
“Oh, that’s why your English is not very good,” the brother replied,
finally figuring it out. “OK, you’re Chinese ... I’m a Muslim.”
“Chinese are very friendly to Muslims!” Danny said. “We are so friendly
to Muslims.”
When the ordeal had started, Danny prayed it would be a quick robbery.
Tamerlan demanded money, but Danny had just $45 in cash -- kept in the
armrest -- and a wallet full of plastic. Evidently disappointed to get so
little out of holding up a $50,000 car, he told Danny to drive. The old
sedan followed.
“Relax,” Tamerlan said, when Danny’s nerves made it hard for him to stay
in the lane. Danny, recalling the moment, said “my heart is pounding so
fast.”
They lapped Brighton and crossed the Charles River into Watertown, following
Arsenal Street. Looking through Danny’s wallet, Tamerlan asked for his ATM
code -- a friend’s birthdate.
Directed to a quiet neighborhood in East Watertown, Danny pulled up as told
on an unfamiliar side street. The sedan stopped behind him. A man approached
-- the skinnier, floppy-haired “Suspect No. 2” in the photos and videos
released by investigators earlier that evening -- and Tamerlan got out,
ordering Danny into the passenger seat, making it clear if he tried anything
he would shoot him. For several minutes, the brothers transferred heavy
objects from the smaller car into Danny’s SUV. “Luggage,” Danny thought.
With Tamerlan driving now, Danny in the passenger seat, and Dzhokhar behind
Danny, they stopped in Watertown Center so Dzhokhar could withdraw money
from the Bank of America ATM using Danny’s card. Danny, shivering from fear
but claiming to be cold, asked for his jacket. Guarded by just one brother,
Danny wondered if this was his chance, but he saw around him only locked
storefronts. A police car drove by, lights off.
Tamerlan agreed to retrieve Danny’s jacket from the back seat. Danny
unbuckled, put on the jacket, then tried to buckle the seatbelt behind him
to make an escape easier.
“Don’t do that,” Tamerlan said, studying him. “Don’t be stupid.”
Danny thought about his burgeoning startup and about a girl he secretly
liked in New York. “I think, ‘Oh my god, I have no chance to meet you
again,’ ” he recalled.
Dzhokhar was back now. “We both have guns,” Tamerlan said, though Danny
had not seen a second weapon.
He overheard them speak in a foreign language -- “Manhattan” the only
intelligible word to him -- and then ask in English if Danny’s car could be
driven out of state. “What do you mean?” Danny said, confused. “Like New
York,” one of the brothers said.
They continued west on Route 20, in the direction of Waltham and Interstate
95, passing a police station. Danny tried to send telepathic messages to the
officers inside, imagined dropping and rolling from the moving car.
Tamerlan asked him to turn on and demonstrate the radio. The older brother
then quickly flipped through stations, seemingly avoiding the news. He asked
if Danny had any CDs. No, he replied, he listens to music on his phone. The
tank nearly empty, they stopped at a gas station, but the pumps were closed.
Doubling back, they returned to the Watertown neighborhood -- “Fairfield
Street,” Danny saw on the sign this time -- and grabbed a few more things
from the parked car, but nothing from the trunk. They put on an instrumental
CD that sounded to Danny like a call to prayer.
Suddenly, Danny’s iPhone buzzed. A text from his roommate, wondering in
Chinese where he was. Barking at Danny for instructions, Tamerlan used an
English-to-Chinese app to text a clunky reply. “I am sick. I am sleeping in
a friend’s place tonight.” In a moment, another text, then a call. No one
answered. Seconds later, the phone rang again.
“If you say a single word in Chinese, I will kill you right now,” Tamerlan
said. Danny understood. His roommate’s boyfriend was on the other end,
speaking Mandarin. “I’m sleeping in my friend’s home tonight,” Danny
replied in English. “I have to go.”
“Good boy,” Tamerlan said. “Good job.”
The SUV headed for the lights of Soldiers Field Road, banking across River
Street to the two open gas stations. Dzhokhar went to fill up using Danny’s
credit card, but quickly knocked on the window. “Cash only,” he said, at
least at that hour. Tamerlan peeled off $50.
Danny watched Dzhokhar head to the store, struggling to decide if this was
his moment -- until he stopped thinking about it, and let reflexes kick in.
“I was thinking I must do two things: unfasten my seatbelt and open the
door and jump out as quick as I can. If I didn’t make it, he would kill me
right out, he would kill me right away,” Danny said. “I just did it. I did
it very fast, using my left hand and right hand simultaneously to open the
door, unfasten my seatbelt, jump out...and go.”
The car faced west, upriver. Danny sprinted between the passenger side of
the Mercedes and the pumps and darted into the street, not looking back,
drawn to the lights of the Mobil.
“I didn’t know if it was open or not,” he said. “In that moment, I
prayed.”
The brothers took off. The clerk, after brief confusion, dialed 911 on a
portable phone, bringing it to Danny in the storeroom. The dispatcher told
him to take a deep breath. The officers, arriving in minutes, took his story
-- with Danny noting that the car could be tracked by his iPhone and by a
two-way Mercedes satellite system known as mbrace. The clerk gave him a
bottled water.
After an hour or more talking to authorities -- as the shootout and manhunt
erupted in Watertown -- police brought Danny out to East Watertown for a “
drive-by lineup,” studying faces of detained suspects in the street from
the safety of a cruiser. He recognized none of them. He spent the night
talking to local and state police and the FBI, appreciating the kindness of
a state trooper who gave him a bagel and coffee. At 3 the next afternoon,
they dropped Danny back in Cambridge.
“I think, Tamerlan is dead, I feel good, obviously safer. But the younger
brother -- I don’t know,” Danny recalled thinking, wondering if Dzhokhar
had discovered his address and would come looking for him. But the police
knew the wallet and registration were still in the bullet-riddled Mercedes,
and that a wounded Dzhokhar had likely not gotten very far. That night, they
found him in a boat.
When news of the capture broke last Friday, Danny’s roommate called out to
him from in front of the living room television. Danny was on the phone at
the time, talking to the girl in New York.
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at e********[email protected]. | b*****d
发帖数: 1900 | 2 哈看得惊心动魄。 这孩子真命大。
the
door,
of
【在 C*****d 的大作中提到】
: By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff
: The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the
: curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind
: him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached
: the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.
: The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him,
: lowered the window -- and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door,
: and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
: “Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news
: about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of
| l******a
发帖数: 16364 | 3 我觉得他抓住了最后的逃生机会，把他留着可能就是为了加油吃饭等等刷个卡，刷完了
就找个偏僻地方干掉。
the
door,
of
【在 C*****d 的大作中提到】
: By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff
: The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the
: curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind
: him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached
: the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.
: The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him,
: lowered the window -- and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door,
: and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
: “Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news
: about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of
| x*****i
发帖数: 4035 | 4 工科男还是比较机灵的，善于创造性地解决问题
the
door,
of
【在 C*****d 的大作中提到】
: By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff
: The 26-year-old Chinese entrepreneur had just pulled his new Mercedes to the
: curb on Brighton Avenue to answer a text when an old sedan swerved behind
: him, slamming on the brakes. A man in dark clothes got out and approached
: the passenger window. It was nearly 11 p.m. last Thursday.
: The man rapped on the glass, speaking quickly. Danny, unable to hear him,
: lowered the window -- and the man reached an arm through, unlocked the door,
: and climbed in, brandishing a silver handgun.
: “Don’t be stupid,” he told Danny. He asked if he had followed the news
: about Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings. Danny had, down to the release of
| B******1
发帖数: 9094 | 5 A potential not-so-good news about this account is that:
The next time a carjack happens, the criminal will shoot the Chinese driver
because he or she knows what happened to the Boston brothers.
This is a logical prediction. I am all ears if you can prove me wrong.
Another lesson:
Do not roll down your car window all the way so that a stranger can reach
inside the car. Heck, do not be so nice to strangers at night! Just pretend
you are deaf or blind.
It gives me another idea which some engineer might want to try:
Design and market a voice-activated pepper spray device installed on the car
! If that device can be handled by a tiny robot, it would be even better. On
the command of a special language (Chinese!) "喷", the device will spray 30
-50 mL of HOT pepper solution to the face of the intruder!
Sell the device for $3000 per piece with personalization options such as
setting the trigger and location. Patent it and sell to All luxury car
makers, car dealers, insurance companies. Sell special solutions with even
more powerful effect (poison!) secretly online.
A more discrete option is to replace the pepper spray with a directional
sound BOMB which will frighten the intruder for a second or two. When I say
"directional," I mean the car is shielded (sort of) from the sound so that
the driver inside the car suffers less hearing loss or fright than the
intruder outside.
Other options:
1) An automatic SWING door on-demand to smash the guy standing outside the
driver's door to the ground. The problems might be if there are more than
one hijacker, the other one might get into the car.
2) Install a pepper-spray behind the driver-side rear view mirror. The
problem might be, the spray might not be able to reach the intruder's eyes.
3) This would be the most crude option: install an automatic huge knife at
the bottom of the car and right underneath the driver's side. On-demand, it
will cut down the intruder's feet!
You guys can think about other creative ways to incapacitate the criminals,
and make a fortune yourself. |
|
