An FBI agent in Orlando shot and killed a Chechen immigrant who was once friends with slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Federal officials confirmed that Ibragim Todashev, 26, was shot dead late Tuesday and news accounts indicated that the fatal incident occurred after Todashev attacked an agent.

The FBI spent three hours Tuesday interviewing both Todashev and a friend, Khusen Taramov, who told Orlando’s WESH-TV that agents had taken Todashev to be interviewed separately. Taramov said: “They were talking to us, both of us, right? And they said they need him for a little more, for a couple more hours, and I left, and they told me they’re going to bring him back. They never brought him back. . . . I told him, ‘Everything is going to be fine, don’t worry about it.’ He said, ‘I have a really bad feeling.’”

The shooting occurred in an apartment complex off Peregrine Avenue in Orlando, according to Central Florida News 13, which also interviewed Taramov, who said FBI agents “started following us, watching us” after Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother Dzhokar were identified as suspects in the April 15 bombing of the Boston Marathon, which killed three people and wounded more than 170 others.

Todashev had reportedly been planning Tuesday to fly back to Chechnya, Taramov said: “He cancelled the tickets because, the FBI had been like, I don’t know, they’ve been pushing him, you know what I’m saying. They’ve been pushing him they say ‘don’t leave, don’t leave’ so he decided to stay.”

Officials told NBC News that investigators did not believe Todashev played any role in the bomb attack, but were questioning him in connection with a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev also may have been a suspect.

Todashev was a mixed martial arts fighter, as was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after a shootout with police three days after the Boston bombing. Tsarnaev’s younger brother and suspected accomplice Dzhokhar, who has been charged with the federal crime of using a weapon of mass destruction. Dzhokhar, who was wounded in the shootout that killed his brother, was found hiding in a boat where he had reportedly left a note expressing radical Islamic sentiments and saying the bombing was retaliation for U.S. foreign policy.

READ MORE:

• WESH-TV: Orlando man killed by FBI had ties to Boston Marathon bombing suspect, NBC News confirms
• Michelle Malkin: Who is Ibragim Todashev? Chechen friend of Boston bomber, planning to fly back to Chechnya, killed by FBI agent
• Central Florida News 13: Friend says man killed by FBI agent knew Boston bombing suspect
• Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: Breaking: FBI shoots, kills person of interest in Boston bombing after man attacks agent
• Richard Esposito, Pete Williams and Matthew DeLuca, NBC News: Man with ties to Boston bombing suspect shot during FBI questioning