They bit the hand that fed them.
Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received welfare benefits as children growing up in Massachusetts — and the elder brother and his wife went back on the government dole after they had a kid, authorities revealed yesterday.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a firefight with authorities last Friday, was receiving welfare for himself, his home health-care worker wife, Katherine Russell, and their toddler daughter before Russell started earning too much for them to qualify for the aid, officials said.
Both Tamerlan and his surviving brother, Dzhokhar, 19, received public assistance with their parents and sisters “for a limited portion of time” after the family emigrated from Russia around 2003, said Alex Loftus, spokesman for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
Loftus declined to reveal the duration of that aid or the amount of money they received. He also would not identify what program that the Tsarnaev clan benefited from.
But family members were eligible to receive benefits because of their status as legal, noncitizen residents granted asylum.
After the birth of his and Russell’s now 3-year-old daughter, Tamerlan went back on the dole, Loftus said, until 2012.