Boston bombing suspect's friend Ibragim Todashev killed in FBI shootout
Updated at 12:10 p.m. ET
(CBS News) The FBI was involved in what it called a "violent confrontation" in Orlando, Fla., early Wednesday that killed a Chechen man with ties to the older brother suspected in last month's deadly terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon.
CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, a former FBI assistant director, reported on "CBS This Morning" that the man, Ibragim Todashev, was friends with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a suspect in the attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.
The FBI has not commented on the relationship between Todashev and Tsarnaev but confirmed that Todashev died in the shootout. Miller reports that, like Tsarnaev, who was once a boxer, Todashev was a mixed-martial-arts fighter.
In a statement Wednesday, the FBI didn't refer to Todashev by name but said that the individual who died was being interviewed in connection with the investigation into the April 15 attack. An FBI special agent was accompanied by two Massachusetts State Police troopers and other law-enforcement officers to interview Todashev in the apartment complex where he lived.
"In the encounter in the apartment, something went wrong," Miller said.
The FBI said that the interview subject initiated "a violent confrontation." The FBI said the agent "sustained non-life-threatening injuries" during the confrontation and was involved in the shooting but didn't provide any other details.
An official told CBS News that Todashev came at the agent with a knife.
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Miller reported that the FBI went to the apartment after midnight Wednesday morning to question him. Todashev had been on the bureau's radar since Tsarnaev was identified as a suspect in the bombing.
"He had been interviewed along with a number of other people in the apartment complex, but the interest in him was higher because of a couple of factors: He was in contact with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been to Boston to visit him, and he was planning a trip to Chechnya," Miller said.
The FBI went to question Todashev overnight after there were indications that he canceled that trip, Miller said. Todashev had been to Chechnya before.
An FBI post-shooting incident-review team was dispatched to Orlando to review the shooting and was expected to arrive there within 24 hours.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a shootout with police outside Boston in the days after the marathon bombings. His younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, remains in federal custody awaiting trial.