NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. -- The family of the widow of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev confirmed Friday that their 24-year-old daughter was married to the Chechen immigrant who died in a confrontation with police earlier in the day, saying, “We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred.”

As for their late son-in-law, the older brother of the two suspects, the family said, they never really knew him.

“Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child,” Warren and Judith Russell, whose daughter Katherine was married to Tsarnaev, said in a statement distributed to about a dozen reporters who gathered outside their home in this well-landscaped, upper middle class neighborhood outside Providence. The mother quietly read the written statement through a barely open door, avoiding cameras.

“... In the aftermath of the Patriot’s Day horror, we know that we never knew Tamerlane Tsarnaev,” the statement said, using an alternative spelling of the suspect’s first name.

“Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted,” the statement continued. “Please respect our family’s privacy in this difficult time.”

The statement provided the first confirmation that their daughter was the wife or partner of the eldest Tsarnaev brother, as had been widely reported. A spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Department of Health, which keeps vital records, said it has no record of a marriage. It is not known if the couple was married in Massachusetts.

Bill Dedman / NBC News

The home in North Kingstown, R.I., where Katherine Russell grew up.

Police Chief Thomas Mulligan in North Kingstown told NBC News that state police officers visited the Russell home Friday morning. A neighbor said she also saw a man wearing an FBI jacket emerge from the home.

Classmates from high school said Katherine was a 2007 graduate of North Kingstown Senior High School. A neighbor, Paula Gillette, 59, told NBC News that Katherine, the oldest of three girls in the Russell family, attended Suffolk University in Boston.  A spokesman for Suffolk said that a Katherine O. Russell from North Kingstown was a communication major  from the fall of 2007 to spring 2010, three academic years, but did not receive a degree.

When she moved back in, Gillette said, she had a young daughter and had taken to wearing a hijab and Islamic dress and rarely left the house.

'We got him'; bombing suspect captured alive

Her husband or boyfriend often came to visit on weekends, driving a Honda Civic with Massachusetts plates, Gillespie said.

Gillespie said Warren Russell is an emergency physician in Providence, a Navy veteran, and the mother, Judith, is a nurse. The mother's Facebook page lists her employer as a social service agency for children.

Slideshow: Search for suspects in Boston Marathon bombings

Jared Wickerham / Getty Images

Cheers filled the streets after a Boston Marathon bombing suspect was captured alive but wounded Friday night — following a daylong manhunt that shut down the city.

Launch slideshow

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 19, 2013 7:23 PM EDT

A home in Hudson, Fla., along Florida's west coast, was ripped apart Wednesday after a massive sinkhole opened beneath it.

No one was inside the house, belonging to 79-year-old Susan Minutillo, when it quietly crumbled to the ground, neighbors said.

“You just look over there and the whole back end of the house just flipped right down into the hole,” neighbor Mike Richards told First Coast News in Jacksonville, Fla.

Ironically, Minutillo was having her home evaluated for the risk of sinkholes when the ground opened up. As crews were surveying her property, she stepped out to run an errand, and by the time she got home, about half of her house was already in the ground, according to Pasco County Fire Rescue crews.

A back bedroom, bathroom and sunroom were swallowed by the natural disaster, exposing the remaining parts of the house.

The home is a total loss, they said.

“She sort of laid her head on my shoulder and cried,” neighbor Dave Taylor told NBC affiliate WPTV in Tampa. “She took it pretty good considering her house had fallen through the ground.”

Neighbors said Minutillo is a widow and was living in the house alone. She's now staying with family.

City and utility crews immediately cordoned off her house, slapped condemned stickers on the front, removed the electric and gas hookups and warned people to stay clear.

Authorities say the hole is about the size of a two-car garage, measuring 20 feet by 40 feet across – big enough to put neighboring homes in jeopardy. Neighbors were ordered to evacuate.

Less than 10 feet from Minutillo’s home, Dave Taylor’s house has so far been unaffected by the sinkhole, but it could meet the same fate.

“If that house is still standing tomorrow, I’m not going to worry about this one,” Taylor told FCN News. “If that goes down, I’m going to start sweating.”  

“If that had happened at night time, it would have caved in and she would have been gone,” neighbor Mikey Delfreo told WPTV.

Neighbors said about half of the properties in the Beacon Wood Estates neighborhood have dealt with sinkhole issues.

Though relatively uncommon in the U.S., sinkholes occur most often Florida, Gerald Black, a geologist and vice president of Geohazards, Inc., an engineering firm specializing in geological evaluations in Gainesville, Fla., told msnbc.com.

“Florida certainly has a unique topography, but sinkholes are a relatively rare natural phenomenon,” Black said. “But even if it does happen, it’s not like you’re going to be instantly swallowed up.”

Black said sinkholes are common in Florida because the rock below the land surface is composed of limestone, calcium carbonate and other rocks that can be naturally dissolved by groundwater circulating through them. When the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground.

This, Black said, can happen over time or quite suddenly like it did with Minutillo’s home, and a sinkhole forms.

The weather may also have something to do with it, Black said, adding that Florida has recently received a lot of precipitation amid drought-like conditions, and the extra moisture has caused the rock to dissolve faster.  

As many as 150 sinkholes are reported in Florida each year.  

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