Family Recalls Horror of Rumor Son Was Boston Bomber

For about four hours on the morning of April 19, Radnor High School alum Sunil Tripathi was mistakenly identified as one of the men responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings.

The false identification started on the community website Reddit, and the New York Times published an article this week asking Should Reddit Be Blamed for the Spreading of a Smear?

The article recounts how one person's visual comparison of Tripathi and who was later found to be Dzhokhar Tsarnaev traveled around the Internet and further disturbed the missing student's family.

Tripathi had gone missing March 16 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was living. His family is from Bryn Mawr.

The New York Times quotes Tripathi's mother Judy: “All the sentiment and help we had received to help find Sunil switched over and said he was a terrorist. And you know the irony is — ” she paused to choke back tears. “Sunil was so gentle, and he was a victim of all that damn scandal, and he was a victim of his depression. It was just so ugly.”

On April 23 authorities found Tripathi's body in the Providence River.