The body ofman missing since last month, and wrongfully identified as one of the Boston bombing suspects, has been found in Rhode Island. Authorities uncovered the body of Sunil Tripathi in the Providence River Tuesday (April 23) evening.
Although Tripathi’s identity has yet to be fully confirmed, Providence police Lieutenant Joseph Donnelly told the Boston Globe that it’s “very, very possible,” the body is that of the student.
Tripathi was a student at Brown University and went missing on March 16. The remains were discovered in the water, behind the Wyndham Garden Providence hotel, at approximately 6 p.m.
News of the body comes a day after a moderator of the “FindBostonBombers” Reddit forum apologized to Tripathi’s family for naming him as the suspect accused of setting off a series of explosions near the marathon’s finish line. “I’d like to extend the deepest apologies to the family of Sunil Tripathi for any part we may have had in relaying what has turned out to be faulty information,” the moderator wrote in a statement. “We cannot begin to know what you’re going through and for that we are truly sorry.
A woman who went to high school with Tripathi wrongfully named him as one of the men wanted by the FBI. “Several users, twitter users, and other sources had heard him identified as the suspect and believed it to be confirmed,” the statement continued. “We were mistaken.”
Reddit’s general manager, Erik Martin, also apologized to the family.
The accusation added Tripathi to a list of others mistaken for the suspects, or targeted, based on their skin color. Last week, a Bangladeshi man from the Bronx was beaten out of retaliation for the marathon attack, which he had nothing to do with.
We now know that the two men believed to have set off the series of explosions, were actually natives of Chechnya, but it was originally assumed that they were Arabic.
The remaining suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has been charged with using “weapons of mass destruction.” His brother, Tamerlan, was killed in a police shootout last Friday (April 19).
See photos of the area where Tripathi’s body was discovered, and dedications to him, below.
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Photos: WPRI/Facebook
