Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev walked into a New Hampshire fireworks store two months before his deadly attack and asked for the “biggest and loudest” kit — then got another set for free, the Daily News has learned.
In a chilling twist, the company that sold Tamerlan the fireworks is the same one that sold Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad the firecrackers he used to build his failed car bomb.
The fireworks Tsarnaev bought contained about 3 pounds of black powder — enough, experts say, to build one of the two pressure-cooker bombs he triggered at the Boston Marathon on April 15.
“We were just shocked,” said Bill Weimer, vice president of Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, N.H. “After our Times Square experience, we said, ‘It can’t happen twice.’ ”
But it did. Weimer searched his sales records last week and discovered Tsarnaev, 26, came into his company’s store in Seabrook on Feb. 6 and was helped by a female store clerk.
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“Like 99% of the men who come in, he asked ‘What’s the biggest and loudest thing you have,’ ” Weimer said.
The clerk directed him to a $199.99 kit under the Lock and Load brand name, containing four launch tubes and 24 black-powder-packed shells. The kits are advertised by the company as “barely legal.”
“Best mortar/canister kit you can get,” reports one reviewer on the Phantom Fireworks website.
Weimer said the kit packs the maximum power allowed under federal law for fireworks.
“For buying the kit, he got one free,” Weimer said. “So that’s a total of 48 shells.”
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Each shell contains roughly 30 grams of black powder — meaning the bombers would have enough explosive power to do serious damage.
April Wilson, manager of the Seabrook store, said she didn’t know about the close encounter with the bomber until she got a call from Weimer at the company’s headquarters in Ohio.
“Our home office called me last Friday and told me that he had been here,” Wilson told The News. “I was instantly overwhelmed when I heard that he had been with one of my young workers.”
It was unclear where Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother and cohort Dzhokhar obtained the rest of their explosive powder, but Weimer said there are at least five fireworks stores in the same area of New Hampshire, about an hour’s drive from Boston.
Weimer said he contacted the FBI as soon as he discovered sales records with Tsarnaev’s name on them.
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He said the transaction did not initially raise red flags, calling it “a totally unremarkable sale.”
That is until bombs exploded at the crowded finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people.
In May 2010, Shahzad traveled to Weimer’s other fireworks supermarket in Matamoras, Pa., where he bought 288 M-88 firecrackers to construct a pressure-cooker bomb he planted in a Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square.
The Pathfinder was also loaded with propane and gas canisters.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has allegedly told police he and Tamerlan concocted the lethal scheme in Boston as a murderous response to the post-9/11 U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The motive behind the twin blasts emerged Tuesday as interrogators grilled Dzhokhar in a Boston hospital.
The younger Tsarnaev scribbled notes indicating he and his brother were acting on their own when they left two shrapnel-laden bombs near the finish line, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Tamerlan — who was killed in a shootout with cops early Friday morning in Watertown, Mass. — was a devoted reader of websites featuring extremist propaganda and urging jihad on the U.S. — including one site linked to a Yemen-based offshoot of Al Qaeda, officials said.
His brother, who can barely speak because of a gunshot wound to the throat, had his condition upgraded to stable Tuesday, the FBI announced.
Meanwhile:
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- Funerals were held for two of the terrorists’ victims, MIT cop Sean Collier, 26, who was shot to death on Friday, and Martin Richard, 8, who was killed in the marathon blasts.
- The estranged wife of Tamerlan announced she was “doing everything she can to assist with the investigation.” She said she was “shocked” to learn of the attack her husband and brother-in-law carried out.
- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that her agency’s systems “pinged” early last year on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s departure for Russia. His return six months later, however, was not flagged because an FBI alert on him had expired.
- U.S. investigators traveled to Russia to meet with the suspects’ parents in the region of Dagestan.
- Two more Tsarnaev relatives released a statement. Alina and Bella Tsarnaev said they were “absolutely devastated by the sense of loss and sorrow this has caused.”
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- Boylston St., where the carnage occurred, was reopened Tuesday to residents and businesses after eight days as an active crime scene.
- Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced that the One Boston Fund to aid victims of the terrorist attack raised $20 million in eight days.
- Chilling new images emerged Tuesday of Dzhokhar coolly swiping $800 from an ATM with a hostage’s bank card.
The crystal-clear gotcha photos were taken at a Bank of America ATM kiosk in Watertown shortly after the Tsarnaev brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz SUV.
“They asked me where I’m from. I told them I’m Chinese,” the carjacking victim, who did not want to be identified, told WCVB-TV in Boston.
“I was very scared,” he said. “I asked them if they were going to hurt me. They said they won’t hurt me. I was thinking, ‘I think they will kill me later.’ ”
With Jennifer Fermino, Bev Ford, Larry McShane, Corky Siemaszko, Irving DeJohn and Joseph Straw
Tamerlan Tsarnaev bought his bombs at NH fireworks depot
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