Boston Boat Owner Describes Terror of Discovering Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Six months after he found bloodied Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat, David Henneberry gave his first major interview about the ordeal, telling the Boston Globe about the discovery, the police's response, and how his home has become a tourist destination.
While initial reports claimed that Henneberry noticed a trail of blood leading to the boat and then went to investigate, he said that was not true. “If I had seen blood out there, I wouldn’t have investigated it,” he said in a separate interview. “I’m not crazy.”
Here’s what really happened, according to the Boston Globe interview: Four night after the bombing, during the Boston-wide lockdown, Henneberry says he noticed that some of his boat’s padding had fallen to the ground. When the lockdown ended, he walked out to the boat and, as he picked up the padding, saw a loose strap from the boat's cover. “I said, ‘Hmmm. I’m going to check the boat,’” he told the Globe.
He grabbed a stepladder and put it beside the boat, which he called Slip Away II. Then he lifted a piece of shrink-wrap that covered a Plexiglas door, allowing him to look inside. He immediately noticed blood splattered on the deck. When he looked near the console, he spotted a body curled in a fetal position, wearing a hoodie and dark shoes.
“I thought, ‘Oh my god, he’s in there,’” Henneberry said.
He dropped the flap, scrambled down the ladder, and ran into the house.
He looked at his wife and said, “He’s in the boat! He’s in our boat!”
Henneberry immediately called the police, who responded in huge numbers and eventually captured Tsarnaev after a brief shootout that destroyed Henneberry ’s boat. “‘I guess I’m going to lose the boat,’ I thought,” he said, recalling the gunfire. “I hope we don’t lose the house, or the neighborhood.”
The FBI confiscated what remained of the boat, for which Henneberry only received $1,000 in insurance. Not that it mattered: less than a week after the capture, a Texas man organized an online fundraiser that eventually raised $50,000 for Henneberry to buy a new one.
While appreciative of the donations, Henneberry and his wife, Beth, have become unwilling local celebrities after the capture; their home has since become a tourist destination, and journalists, authors, and film producers have continually contacted them
“I just want this all to fade away,” he said. “I’m not like a rock star who sought publicity. I don’t want any more.”
“It just goes on and on,” his wife added. “We just want it to go away.”
[Image via AP]