Boston Marathon bombing victim Jarrod Clowery said Friday that he stood behind the death sentence a jury imposed on bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but that "it disappoints me a little bit that he gets what he wants, if he does in fact want death."
"To do what he did, the way it went down . . . but him and his brother kind of wanted to die," Clowery, 35, a carpenter who lives in Stoneham, Massachusetts, told Neil Cavuto on
Fox News. "They had shootouts with police, and to be willing to good so far as they did and…"
Clowery was referring to Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a shootout with police four days after the bombings on April 15, 2013, at the marathon's finish line.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, was
sentenced to death on six of 17 federal capital murder counts that he was convicted of on April 8 by a jury of seven men and five women. They deliberated 15 hours in the trial's sentencing phase.
Clowery was watching the marathon with a group of friends when the last of two pressure-cooker bombs exploded. He experienced burns, shrapnel wounds, and hearing loss as a result of the blasts — and three of his friends later lost limbs,
The Boston Globe reports.
Clowery told Cavuto that "as a citizen of this country, I stand behind their verdict and the jurors."
Regarding the jury's task, he said: "It must have been tough. It must have been really tough to have to deal with all that."
He thanked law enforcement, first responders, city officials and the judicial system for their work in the case.
"To be honest," Clowery told Cavuto at the outset of the interview, "I haven't followed the case. That's how I've dealt with it. Me and my family, we just kind of put it behind us."
When asked about reports that Tsarnaev showed no emotion when the death verdicts were announced, Clowery said, "It's comical, to be honest with you."
"I believe in my heart, and I believe a lot of people believe, that 99 percent of humans are good. I think we're good," he added. "And that small percentage that would do something so despicable like that, I don't think any one of us would trade places with him.
"If that's how he wants to go out, and if that's how he wants to be remembered, that's his business.
"I'm moving on with my life and my friends who survived," Clowery said. "We've all helped each other get through — and we're all moving on and doing great things."