LYNN — Michael Derby had just started to come to grips with Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing when he saw a news report stating his dorm mate is allegedly one of the bombers.
“I can’t believe I knew him,” he said from a friend’s place at Merrimack College.
The native Lynner is a University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth sophomore and said he not only lived in the same dorm as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who authorities identified as a suspect in Monday’s marathon bombing as well as a UMass-Dartmouth sophomore, but the two had hung out together.
“I wouldn’t say we were friends, more acquaintances,” he said. “We had a mutual friend. We played a lot of video games.”
Derby said the last time he saw Tsarnaev was about two weeks ago when he bumped into him in the dining hall.
“We just shook hands and said we’d see each other around,” he said.
Derby said he didn’t have a “deep personal relationship” with Tsarnaev but he described him as a funny kid, a nice, normal kid, “there was nothing out of the ordinary about him.”
Brendan Holey, another Lynner attending UMass Dartmouth, said a friend spoke Friday morning with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s roommate who told the friend that Tsarnaev sent him this text: “Hey, you can have all my stuff. I’m going to leave the country.”
Holey said his friend and fellow UMass student did not indicate when Tsarnaev’s roommate received the text from the fugitive and Marathon bomb suspect. He said he knows students who know Tsarnaev and described him as a “very normal guy.”
“He could have held a door for me, for all I know,” Holey said.
Another Lynner, Florida Addy, 19, told the Associated Press she lived on the same dormitory floor as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev last year. She called him “drug” – the Russian word for friend, pronounced “droog” – and said they would sometimes hang out together in his room.
She said he spent a lot of his time with other kids from Russia and that a few times she accompanied with him to the apartment of some Russian students he knew in New Bedford, not far from campus. She said he would always speak Russian in the apartment, although he usually didn’t speak it around her.
He was quiet, friendly and a little mysterious, but in a charming way, she said. He usually wore a hoodie or a white T-shirt and sweatpants, she said.
Addy said she just learned he had a girlfriend who did not attend UMass Dartmouth. The last time she saw him was last week when she bummed a cigarette off him, she said.
“He was nice. He was cool. I’m just in shock,” she said.
Derby, along with his mother and brother, was at Monday’s marathon to cheer on his father, Michael Derby Sr., who was running. Michael Derby Sr. said his family stood just across the street from where the second bomb went off but were unharmed.
Michael Derby Jr. said the full impact of what took place Monday was really just starting to hit him Thursday then he awoke Friday to his Twitter account working overtime. Friends were posting messages about knowing one of the alleged bombers so he flipped on the news and saw Tsarnaev’s picture.
“I was really surprised,” he said. “Shocked ”¦ I’m just getting my head around the fact that he killed all those people. I can’t put it into words. I just had no idea.”
Derby said it was soon after he saw the early morning news reports that he decided to leave campus.
“I left pretty early in the day because it all scared me a little,” he said.
As he headed out the door to a friend’s at Merrimack College, he said police officers with assault rifles were already on campus and helicopters were coming in.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he said.
The campus was closed and students evacuated shortly thereafter. Derby said he is not sure if he’ll head home Saturday or hang out in hopes the campus would reopen. He said he had tickets to a concert for Friday evening and he hoped the event would help put a stop to constant swirl of events in his head.
“Hopefully it will do something,” he said.
Holey said college authorities alerted students by electronic mail and by text message to leave the school 60 miles south of Boston Friday morning, informing them classes were canceled. Holey said a follow-up telephone message to students described the campus closing as a “precaution” and urged students to calmly leave the school “for their own safety.”
“They didn’t want anyone to panic,” Holey said.
Michael Derby Sr. said Friday he had spoken with his son and felt confident that he was fine but admitted he himself hadn’t fully processed the fact that Tsarnaev and his son knew each other.
“(Tsarnaev) followed him on twitter,” he said. “I’m sure it was innocent that there was nothing behind it ”¦ but it’s a little creepy.”
Derby Sr. said the fact that law officials have zeroed in on suspects does bring some closure for victims and runners.
“I just would have thought after Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they would be long gone somewhere saying they did it and got away with it and are now heroes,” he said. “But they didn’t and I’m relieved.”
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected].
