(NECN: Alysha Palumbo) - Residents of rural Doswell, Va. were up in arms Friday as word leaked out that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body had been buried in an unmarked grave in a small Muslim cemetery there.
One Doswell resident said, "It's like a big shock to me, the fact that somebody like that being buried right next door to me."
"I think it's a little outrageous that they committed a hateful crime," said another Doswell resident.
The burial was a surprise to local leaders as well - who weren't pleased to have the national media spotlight shift to their community.
"We have not received any prior information of any type of burial here in Caroline County, nobody notified us," Caroline County Sheriff Tony Lippa said.
Caroline Co., Va. Board of Supervisors Floyd Thomas said, "This was a horrific act, this was a terrible crime, we don't want the county to be remembered as the resting place for the remain of someone who committed a terrible crime."
But the Virginia woman who helped facilitate the burial by reaching out to leaders from several different faiths, said she felt compelled to help as she watched protestors disrupt the neighborhood around the Worcester, Mass. funeral parlor where Tsarnaev's body had been for the past week.
"Fundamentally it struck me as wrong because no matter what people do we ought to bury them," Martha Mullen said.
The owners of the Al-Barzahk cemetery say they felt a moral obligation to help out when no one else would.
"We have somebody that has passed away, he can't bury himself, somebody needed to take responsibility, we were able to do so, and that's what we did," Bukhari Abdel-Alim, the vice president of Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, said.
Doswell, Va. Officials: We Did Not Know About Burial
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