CONFLICTED THOUGHTS OF A YOUNG KILLER?

        I wonder what thoughts crowded young Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's mind, as he lay bleeding in the bottom of the tarp-covered motor boat in David Heneberry's back yard.
       Was he frightened? I would think so. His older, dominating brother had been killed. The nineteen-year old fugitive was now alone and seriously wounded. He knew the whole world was looking for him. He had nowhere to go, nowhere to turn, even if he had the strength to climb out of what he must have feared would soon become his coffin.
        Was he remorseful? I would hope so. His high school classmates and teachers remember him as a friendly, likable student-athlete, before he began to change. His tweets reflected that change. Were his opposite natures in conflict, as the reality of his desperate situation dawned upon him in the darkness of his hiding place? Was the conscience of the decent young naturalized American he once was now questioning the cold-blooded killer he had become?
        Did the murder and maiming of so many innocent people now feel to him like heroic acts or heinous crimes? Was he rejoicing over or ruing his brother’s violent death? Did he run over his brother’s bullet-ridden body accidentally, or deliberately, perhaps hoping to detonate the IED strapped to the dead man’s chest?
        And what about the victims of his crime? Was he haunted by pictures of their faces and those of their grieving loved onrs he had seen on television?
        Perhaps we shall know the answers to these and many other questions in the days to come, if
the young man survives. While in no way excusing his horrible crimes, I nevertheless can find room in my heart to pity him, especially if he is remorseful and penitent. And if he is not, then I pity him for being duped and brainwashed by his brother, or whomever, into becoming what he became.