Families to Protest Possible Burial of Boston Bombing Suspect

The owner of the plot says that he was taught to "love thine enemy."

Hours after a Yale Divinity School graduate posted a blog offering a plot in a Hamden cemetery to the family of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev a protest is being planned.

On Monday, Paul Keane, who now lives in Vermont, wrote in his blog "The Anti Yale" that he would like to "donate a burial plot next to my mother in Mt. Carmel Burying Ground to the Tsarnaev family if they cannot obtain a plot." 

Family members of deceased buried at the cemetery said they are upset and plan to gather at Mt. Carmel Cemetery and hold a protest at 3:30 p.m.

"We don't want a bomber buried in our cemetery," Bill Copeland, of Hamden, said. "I immediately came down here and we want to put an end to this right now."

Keane's family owns four plots in the Central Burying Grounds on Whitney Avenue, according to reports. His parents are buried in two of the plots, while the other two remain empty.

"This doesn't make any sense. This person is not from the community, doesn't have family here and has no business being buried here," Butch Butterworth, of Hamden, said of Tsarnaev.

Copeland said the families will continue to be out as long as it takes.

Keane wrote on Monday that the only condition is he offers the plot is "in memory of my mother who taught Sunday School at the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church for twenty years and taught me to 'love thine enemy'."

When NBC Connecticut contacted Keane on Tuesday, he responded with an e-mail;

"I have no further comment except what my mother taught me in Sunday School: "love thine enemy."

Georgiana Azzaro, of Hamden, who lives near the cemetery, said she has no issue with the burial offer.

"I guess he has to go someplace and there's a plot here for him," she said.

Sandra Marenholz, of Cheshire, however, said she plans to do whatever it takes to keep the body of Tamaerlan Tsarnaev out of the cemetery.

"People that are terrorists to this country should not be in this cemetery," she said.

The New Haven Register reports that a funeral director from the Worcester funeral home that is guarding Tsarnaev's body said it is unlikely that he will be buried in Hamden.

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