A man shot and killed during FBI questioning in Orlando, Fla., allegedly confessed to law enforcement agents that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, were responsible for an unsolved triple murder two years ago, sources said Wednesday.

The FBI’s field office in Tampa released a statement confirming the “shooting incident involving an FBI special agent.”

“The agent encountered the suspect while conducting official duties,” the statement said. “The suspect is deceased. We do not have any further details at this time.”

The victim, identified as Ibragim Todashev, allegedly became violent during an interview in his apartment with the FBI, who have been questioning anyone who may have had contact with Tsarnaev, the older brother killed in a shootout with police in the days after the April 15 bombing.

Todashev was shot after attacking the agent with a knife. The agent, who was accompanied by Massachusetts police officers during the interview, has non-lethal wounds from the incident, CBS News said.

Law enforcement sources told CBS News that Todashev went for the agent after he implicated himself and Tsarnaev in the grisly triple murder in a Waltham, Mass., apartment in 2011. The pair allegedly slashed the throats of their victims, nearly decapitating them, after a drug deal went wrong.

There is no evidence linking Todashev to the Boston Marathon bombing.

Police are interviewing a number of people who may have had ties to the Tsarnaev brothers to determine how and when they became radicalized.

A friend of Todashev told local TV station Central Florida News 13 that Todashev, 26, was a member of the Chechen community and knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Khusen Taramov insisted that his friend was not involved in the bombings and that the FBI has been following him since the marathon attack last month.

“One day they started questioning us . . . after they found out the bombers were Chechens, and they started following us, watching us,” Taramov told the news station.

Taramov said that Todashev had a meeting scheduled with the FBI for Tuesday, which was supposed to be his last.

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Todashev was planning to fly back to Chechnya on Tuesday night with plane tickets purchased before the bombings. He said an FBI agent strongly advised Todashev not to leave the country.

“But we had a feeling, worst-case scenario something like that was going to happen.” Taramov told CF13.